Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Re: "compelled" you do have a wee point, though what I meant to say was that it compelled his highly public touting of arms shipments.
Re: bollocks, kindly keep yours to yourself. Seeing as how you've already aired 'em 3 times in your last 4 comments
Except now every country is now jumping up and down about how much they are doing to help out. Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?
I’ll call you out on your claims he is a Putinist any time I like.
"Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?"
No, but of course I never said that, or anything close.
Call out whatever you wish to call out for whatever. Just stop flaunting your family jewels.
Unless of course they are the essence of your argument?
You implied it by suggesting the only reason he is speaking publicly about it is because he’s Putin’s stooge. How do you explain everyone else doing the same then?
Because he's a proven liar, and (most) of the others are not?
Ah ok, so it’s based on your prejudices about the man, not actually facts.
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Johnson is not a Putinist, nonetheless it does look like Johnson and the Conservative Party have been played by Putin and Putin shills. Perhaps played like a violin.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
History suggests, though, that with outside support, countries can rebuild remarkably quickly.
I believe West German GDP was reaching new highs by 1950 in the early 1950s.
The Marshall Plan was atypically generous
Sure: but Ukraine would be supported financially not just by the US but also by all of Western Europe.
I think so, not just in aid terms but also favourable trade deals etc.
You don’t want to be in the position to find out, because it means something awful has happened, but rebuilding your entire economy and infrastructure form scratch almost has to boost efficiency and productivity in the long run so long as you can manage down the inevitable corruption.
While Ukraine has made much progress since 1991, and seems to be very motivated to join the EU, it does have a post Soviet economy not dissimilar to Russia in terms of corruption and oligarchs.
I am all in favour of Ukranian integration into the mainstream of Europe, but it has a hell of a lot to do, even before war damage.
Well, yes, perhaps because Russia had spent the last couple of decades interfering with Ukraine's politics. Zelinsky came in vowing to change that, and his predecessor apparently made some moves.
It'll be interesting to see how a Ukraine free from Russian interference manages.
According to Transparency International, there has been a steady improvement in Perception of Corruption (CPI) Index since 2013, but it is still ranked 122 out of 180 countries (Russia: 136/180, UKr 2013: 144/177, Ru 2013: 127/177 ). A chunk of that will be the military, which is massively improved.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Kaliningrad would undoubtedly vote to stay with Russia. So it would be a rather pointless gesture.
I'm not sure that the provision would be pointless; there are plenty of other areas depending how far it goes.
How would the former (part of) Karelia now in Russia vote wrt rejoining Finland, for example?
82% Russian in 2010, only 7.4% Karelian, 1.4% Finnish
I don't think you can call it.
All the areas of Ukraine voted for independence in the 1991 Referendum, including the 'Russian' ones.
Karelia isn't part of the Ukraine. And you said "rejoining Finland", not "vote for independence".
Why does Ukraine constantly have the definite article put in front of it, is it a cold war remnant or some such. Not just yourself, the number of times I've heard on the radio an incorrect "'the' Ukraine" is phenomonal.
It's not incorrect. Geographic regions often take a definite article (eg, the Dordogne) and sometimes they are the name of a country, eg the Congo, the Sudan.
It used to be more common. People used to say the Lebanon, the Argentine.
The Ukrainians prefer us not to use the article, on the grounds it makes them sound like a region of Russia (although it may have actually been named in reference to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). Western Ukraine used to have other names eg Galicia, Volhynia, Lodomeria.
It makes no difference in Ukrainian or Russian, neither of which language uses definite or indefinite articles
Since Ukraine's declaration of independence in 1991, the use of the definite article in the name has become rarer and style guides advise against its use.[21][22] According to US ambassador William Taylor, "the Ukraine" now implies disregard for Ukrainian sovereignty.[23] The official Ukrainian position is that "the Ukraine" is incorrect, both grammatically and politically.[24]
TSE may be interested to know I like to think in terms of "Predator".
"Predator" = sci-fi and action classic "The Predator" = crappy dumbed-down version.
"Help" = Beatles musical comedy-adventure classic "The Help" = a different film altogether.
A better analogy than Boris's EU vs. Britain = Russia vs. Ukraine one would be a post-separation Scotland wanting to join the EU, but RUK, for strategic reasons, is very anti. It offers the RUK-friendly Scottish PM a wide-ranging trade deal with RUK if Scotland gives up it's attempt to join the EU. However, it all kicks off on the Scottish side, as the attempt by RUK to decide the course of Scotland's future is resented by many, and many others frankly just hate the bones of the English, so it doesn't matter that there's probably more benefit in the UK deal than the EU deal for Scotland, protests kick off (aided by the EU) and unseat the RUK favouring PM, replacing him with an EU-loving one. There's pretty much open dislike from then on, RUK accusing the EU of unwarranted interference in it's back yard, the EU insisting that the UK is being a bully and attempting to thwart the will of the Scottish people. Scottish people growing steadily less pro-RUK, except a significant English minority, who are just getting more and more nervous. Etc.
I’m missing the bit where, in any circumstances, thus would justify rUK invading Scotland, razing Edinburgh to the ground, deporting the surviving population to Wales and repopulating the country with a bunch of Sassenachs
Well, it doesn't, as it doesn't in Russia's case either, but yet it's not impossible to see circumstances where the scenario might get really ugly.
I am confident that, despite @HYUFD entreaties, rUK would not invade Scotland.
In the same way as I know that Mrs T would not have nuked Argentina
No, we could just refuse Scotland a trade deal if they joined the EU instead.
Though if a Scottish nationalist government was ever granted an indyref2 and Yes won then the Scottish borders could well become the Scottish Donbass region, a disputed region claimed by both the rUK and Scottish government with a Unionist pro British majority stoll
No it wouldn’t. It just wouldn’t.
The Borders voted 67% to stay in the UK in 2014 and neighbour England, in fact it would be even more so
'The Borders voted 67% to stay in the UK in 2014 and neighbour England'
Lovely little Feudian slip.
And use of the article "The Borders"
Yep, that pesky definite article pops up with those other areas/regions so beloved by greater British nationalists, 'the' Orkneys and 'the' Shetlands. I'm sensing a pattern..
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Kaliningrad would undoubtedly vote to stay with Russia. So it would be a rather pointless gesture.
I'm not sure that the provision would be pointless; there are plenty of other areas depending how far it goes.
How would the former (part of) Karelia now in Russia vote wrt rejoining Finland, for example?
82% Russian in 2010, only 7.4% Karelian, 1.4% Finnish
I don't think you can call it.
All the areas of Ukraine voted for independence in the 1991 Referendum, including the 'Russian' ones.
Karelia isn't part of the Ukraine. And you said "rejoining Finland", not "vote for independence".
Why does Ukraine constantly have the definite article put in front of it, is it a cold war remnant or some such. Not just yourself, the number of times I've heard on the radio an incorrect "'the' Ukraine" is phenomonal.
It's not incorrect. Geographic regions often take a definite article (eg, the Dordogne) and sometimes they are the name of a country, eg the Congo, the Sudan.
It used to be more common. People used to say the Lebanon, the Argentine.
The Ukrainians prefer us not to use the article, on the grounds it makes them sound like a region of Russia (although it may have actually been named in reference to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). Western Ukraine used to have other names eg Galicia, Volhynia, Lodomeria.
It makes no difference in Ukrainian or Russian, neither of which language uses definite or indefinite articles
"I live in United Kingdom" sounds wrong to me. As does "I am going to Czech".
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Johnson is not a Putinist, nonetheless it does look like Johnson and the Conservative Party have been played by Putin and Putin shills. Perhaps played like a violin.
So what did they get?
A lot of dead soldiers and burnt out tanks. Played like a violin, apparently.
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Johnson is not a Putinist, nonetheless it does look like Johnson and the Conservative Party have been played by Putin and Putin shills. Perhaps played like a violin.
So what did they get?
The leading possibility there is surely too obvious to have to repeat.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I can't begin to imaging the problems we'd be storing up for the future by turning Putin's feverish and mad accusations into reality.
Personally I think that is a perhaps partly a red herring, and that "republics" etc perhaps have a right to self-determination.
There are also plenty of pieces of other countries Ru has obtained by conquest quite recently.
This is an interesting and appalling thread on life in the Donetsk "republic", published last August. One of the strongest motivators of Ukranian resistance is that life in a Russian separatist Republic is very grim.
Jesus. If that is just halfway true Putin has taken Russia right back to Stalin-esque repression and abuse.
Absolute power, and what it does. Grim
I've read other threads on the "Republics", and while they are not quite as bad as that one, life in them appears to be very fart from fun.
Coincidentally I am just watching episode 9 of series 2 of "Rick Stein's Cornwall", when he talks about Cornishman William Golding, the writer (whose murderer still walks this earth)
Apparently Lord of the Flies was inspired by Golding's experience of WW2 which was - to my surprise - intense and profound. He was in command of a missile firing boat off Normandy in 1944
Golding wrote the book to illustrate how the most civilised Germans could descend into sadistic depravity, very quickly, and that the same is true of all humanity
A lesson we have to relearn, again and again
This also points up why Democracy is ultimately so much better. It is the one unique defence against this barbaric element in the human psyche. The evil and the powerful can be brought to account
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I can't begin to imaging the problems we'd be storing up for the future by turning Putin's feverish and mad accusations into reality.
Personally I think that is a perhaps partly a red herring, and that "republics" etc perhaps have a right to self-determination.
There are also plenty of pieces of other countries Ru has obtained by conquest quite recently.
This is an interesting and appalling thread on life in the Donetsk "republic", published last August. One of the strongest motivators of Ukranian resistance is that life in a Russian separatist Republic is very grim.
Jesus. If that is just halfway true Putin has taken Russia right back to Stalin-esque repression and abuse.
Absolute power, and what it does. Grim
I've read other threads on the "Republics", and while they are not quite as bad as that one, life in them appears to be very fart from fun.
Coincidentally I am just watching episode 9 of series 2 of "Rick Stein's Cornwall", when he talks about Cornishman William Golding, the writer (whose murderer still walks this earth)
Apparently Lord of the Flies was inspired by Golding's experience of WW2 which was - to my surprise - intense and profound. He was in command of a missile firing boat off Normandy in 1944
Golding wrote the book to illustrate how the most civilised Germans could descend into sadistic depravity, very quickly, and that the same is true of all humanity
A lesson we have to relearn, again and again
This also points up why Democracy is ultimately so much better. It is the one unique defence against this barbaric element in the human psyche. The evil and the powerful can be brought to account
This war teaches us much....
Slightly surprised that LotF could come from his war service, as he was (literally) offshore, albeit on those things which were bloody intense:
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Kaliningrad would undoubtedly vote to stay with Russia. So it would be a rather pointless gesture.
I'm not sure that the provision would be pointless; there are plenty of other areas depending how far it goes.
How would the former (part of) Karelia now in Russia vote wrt rejoining Finland, for example?
82% Russian in 2010, only 7.4% Karelian, 1.4% Finnish
I don't think you can call it.
All the areas of Ukraine voted for independence in the 1991 Referendum, including the 'Russian' ones.
Karelia isn't part of the Ukraine. And you said "rejoining Finland", not "vote for independence".
Why does Ukraine constantly have the definite article put in front of it, is it a cold war remnant or some such. Not just yourself, the number of times I've heard on the radio an incorrect "'the' Ukraine" is phenomonal.
It's not incorrect. Geographic regions often take a definite article (eg, the Dordogne) and sometimes they are the name of a country, eg the Congo, the Sudan.
It used to be more common. People used to say the Lebanon, the Argentine.
The Ukrainians prefer us not to use the article, on the grounds it makes them sound like a region of Russia (although it may have actually been named in reference to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). Western Ukraine used to have other names eg Galicia, Volhynia, Lodomeria.
It makes no difference in Ukrainian or Russian, neither of which language uses definite or indefinite articles
Since Ukraine's declaration of independence in 1991, the use of the definite article in the name has become rarer and style guides advise against its use.[21][22] According to US ambassador William Taylor, "the Ukraine" now implies disregard for Ukrainian sovereignty.[23] The official Ukrainian position is that "the Ukraine" is incorrect, both grammatically and politically.[24]
TSE may be interested to know I like to think in terms of "Predator".
"Predator" = sci-fi and action classic "The Predator" = crappy dumbed-down version.
"Help" = Beatles musical comedy-adventure classic "The Help" = a different film altogether.
What about “Batman” and “The Batman”?
Ah but which one? There were three Batmans, produced in 1943, 1966 and 1989. (Which makes me think, weren't we due another Batman in 2012?)
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Re: "compelled" you do have a wee point, though what I meant to say was that it compelled his highly public touting of arms shipments.
Re: bollocks, kindly keep yours to yourself. Seeing as how you've already aired 'em 3 times in your last 4 comments
Except now every country is now jumping up and down about how much they are doing to help out. Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?
I’ll call you out on your claims he is a Putinist any time I like.
"Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?"
No, but of course I never said that, or anything close.
Call out whatever you wish to call out for whatever. Just stop flaunting your family jewels.
Unless of course they are the essence of your argument?
You implied it by suggesting the only reason he is speaking publicly about it is because he’s Putin’s stooge. How do you explain everyone else doing the same then?
Because he's a proven liar, and (most) of the others are not?
Ah ok, so it’s based on your prejudices about the man, not actually facts.
Fact that Boris Johnson is a proven liar is not a fact?
Personally will take it like a human IF the record eventually confirms that Boris Johnson is NOT Vladimir Putin's stodge.
Just NOT holding my breath awaiting this possibility. And NOT giving him the benefit of the doubt in meantime. NOT based on what we know for sure so far.
What we know for sure is that Johnson armed Ukraine when other Western European countries dragged their heels and prepared to deal with the fait accompli of a Russian takeover. The evidence that he is Putin's stooge is non-existent.
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Yes, there are many reasons one might dislike this PM, but anyone saying he’s in the pocket of the Russians is basically telling themselves a fairy story because they already dislike him. Stick with the other reasons to dislike him guys - he ain’t Donald Trump. Otherwise you might find you’ve cried wolf too often when we really do have a corrupt PM in the pocket of a foreign power one day.
Yes. He's in the pocket of the very rich, not of the Russians. Some of the very rich happen to be Russians, that's all. But the very rich are from lots of other places as well, including the UK.
Actually fewer of the rich voted for Boris in 2019 than usually voted Tory.
Only 40% of voters earning over £70,000 a year (the highest earning group in the Yougov post election survey) voted Conservative in 2019 compared to 43% overall. In 2015 however 51% of those earning over £70,000 voted for Cameron's Conservative party compared to only 37% overall.
But you're always telling us that the rich are more intelligent or at least better ediccated at Oxford etc because they can afford it, so they are better educated etc. Which says something about Conservative policy under Mr Johnson even by your own data.
Should also be noted Cameron narrowly won graduates in 2015 too, unlike Boris in 2019
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I can't begin to imaging the problems we'd be storing up for the future by turning Putin's feverish and mad accusations into reality.
Personally I think that is a perhaps partly a red herring, and that "republics" etc perhaps have a right to self-determination.
There are also plenty of pieces of other countries Ru has obtained by conquest quite recently.
This is an interesting and appalling thread on life in the Donetsk "republic", published last August. One of the strongest motivators of Ukranian resistance is that life in a Russian separatist Republic is very grim.
Jesus. If that is just halfway true Putin has taken Russia right back to Stalin-esque repression and abuse.
Absolute power, and what it does. Grim
I've read other threads on the "Republics", and while they are not quite as bad as that one, life in them appears to be very fart from fun.
Coincidentally I am just watching episode 9 of series 2 of "Rick Stein's Cornwall", when he talks about Cornishman William Golding, the writer (whose murderer still walks this earth)
Apparently Lord of the Flies was inspired by Golding's experience of WW2 which was - to my surprise - intense and profound. He was in command of a missile firing boat off Normandy in 1944
Golding wrote the book to illustrate how the most civilised Germans could descend into sadistic depravity, very quickly, and that the same is true of all humanity
A lesson we have to relearn, again and again
This also points up why Democracy is ultimately so much better. It is the one unique defence against this barbaric element in the human psyche. The evil and the powerful can be brought to account
This war teaches us much....
Good post but... William Golding 'whose murderer still walks this earth'?
According to wiki:
"In 1985, Golding and his wife moved to a house called Tullimaar in Perranarworthal, near Truro, Cornwall. He died of heart failure eight years later on 19 June 1993. His body was buried in the parish churchyard of Bowerchalke near his former home and the Wiltshire county border with Hampshire and Dorset."
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I can't begin to imaging the problems we'd be storing up for the future by turning Putin's feverish and mad accusations into reality.
Personally I think that is a perhaps partly a red herring, and that "republics" etc perhaps have a right to self-determination.
There are also plenty of pieces of other countries Ru has obtained by conquest quite recently.
This is an interesting and appalling thread on life in the Donetsk "republic", published last August. One of the strongest motivators of Ukranian resistance is that life in a Russian separatist Republic is very grim.
Jesus. If that is just halfway true Putin has taken Russia right back to Stalin-esque repression and abuse.
Absolute power, and what it does. Grim
I've read other threads on the "Republics", and while they are not quite as bad as that one, life in them appears to be very fart from fun.
Coincidentally I am just watching episode 9 of series 2 of "Rick Stein's Cornwall", when he talks about Cornishman William Golding, the writer (whose murderer still walks this earth)
Apparently Lord of the Flies was inspired by Golding's experience of WW2 which was - to my surprise - intense and profound. He was in command of a missile firing boat off Normandy in 1944
Golding wrote the book to illustrate how the most civilised Germans could descend into sadistic depravity, very quickly, and that the same is true of all humanity
A lesson we have to relearn, again and again
This also points up why Democracy is ultimately so much better. It is the one unique defence against this barbaric element in the human psyche. The evil and the powerful can be brought to account
This war teaches us much....
'whose murderer still walks this earth'
?
Do tell.
Golding taught at my school, Bishop Wordsworth in Salisbury. He died of heart failure, apparently. Perhaps @Leon believes someone startled him to death?
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Kaliningrad would undoubtedly vote to stay with Russia. So it would be a rather pointless gesture.
I'm not sure that the provision would be pointless; there are plenty of other areas depending how far it goes.
How would the former (part of) Karelia now in Russia vote wrt rejoining Finland, for example?
82% Russian in 2010, only 7.4% Karelian, 1.4% Finnish
I don't think you can call it.
All the areas of Ukraine voted for independence in the 1991 Referendum, including the 'Russian' ones.
Karelia isn't part of the Ukraine. And you said "rejoining Finland", not "vote for independence".
Why does Ukraine constantly have the definite article put in front of it, is it a cold war remnant or some such. Not just yourself, the number of times I've heard on the radio an incorrect "'the' Ukraine" is phenomonal.
It's not incorrect. Geographic regions often take a definite article (eg, the Dordogne) and sometimes they are the name of a country, eg the Congo, the Sudan.
It used to be more common. People used to say the Lebanon, the Argentine.
The Ukrainians prefer us not to use the article, on the grounds it makes them sound like a region of Russia (although it may have actually been named in reference to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). Western Ukraine used to have other names eg Galicia, Volhynia, Lodomeria.
It makes no difference in Ukrainian or Russian, neither of which language uses definite or indefinite articles
"I live in United Kingdom" sounds wrong to me. As does "I am going to Czech".
"I live in the Congo" sounds right. "I live in the France" doesn't.
A better analogy than Boris's EU vs. Britain = Russia vs. Ukraine one would be a post-separation Scotland wanting to join the EU, but RUK, for strategic reasons, is very anti. It offers the RUK-friendly Scottish PM a wide-ranging trade deal with RUK if Scotland gives up it's attempt to join the EU. However, it all kicks off on the Scottish side, as the attempt by RUK to decide the course of Scotland's future is resented by many, and many others frankly just hate the bones of the English, so it doesn't matter that there's probably more benefit in the UK deal than the EU deal for Scotland, protests kick off (aided by the EU) and unseat the RUK favouring PM, replacing him with an EU-loving one. There's pretty much open dislike from then on, RUK accusing the EU of unwarranted interference in it's back yard, the EU insisting that the UK is being a bully and attempting to thwart the will of the Scottish people. Scottish people growing steadily less pro-RUK, except a significant English minority, who are just getting more and more nervous. Etc.
I’m missing the bit where, in any circumstances, thus would justify rUK invading Scotland, razing Edinburgh to the ground, deporting the surviving population to Wales and repopulating the country with a bunch of Sassenachs
Well, it doesn't, as it doesn't in Russia's case either, but yet it's not impossible to see circumstances where the scenario might get really ugly.
I am confident that, despite @HYUFD entreaties, rUK would not invade Scotland.
In the same way as I know that Mrs T would not have nuked Argentina
No, we could just refuse Scotland a trade deal if they joined the EU instead.
Though if a Scottish nationalist government was ever granted an indyref2 and Yes won then the Scottish borders could well become the Scottish Donbass region, a disputed region claimed by both the rUK and Scottish government with a Unionist pro British majority stoll
No it wouldn’t. It just wouldn’t.
The Borders voted 67% to stay in the UK in 2014 and neighbour England, in fact it would be even more so
'The Borders voted 67% to stay in the UK in 2014 and neighbour England'
Lovely little Feudian slip.
And use of the article "The Borders"
Yep, that pesky definite article pops up with those other areas/regions so beloved by greater British nationalists, 'the' Orkneys and 'the' Shetlands. I'm sensing a pattern..
In any case HYUFD is talking rubbish. There is no area called the Borders or The Borders.
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Re: "compelled" you do have a wee point, though what I meant to say was that it compelled his highly public touting of arms shipments.
Re: bollocks, kindly keep yours to yourself. Seeing as how you've already aired 'em 3 times in your last 4 comments
Except now every country is now jumping up and down about how much they are doing to help out. Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?
I’ll call you out on your claims he is a Putinist any time I like.
"Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?"
No, but of course I never said that, or anything close.
Call out whatever you wish to call out for whatever. Just stop flaunting your family jewels.
Unless of course they are the essence of your argument?
You implied it by suggesting the only reason he is speaking publicly about it is because he’s Putin’s stooge. How do you explain everyone else doing the same then?
Because he's a proven liar, and (most) of the others are not?
Ah ok, so it’s based on your prejudices about the man, not actually facts.
Fact that Boris Johnson is a proven liar is not a fact?
No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one.
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Johnson is not a Putinist, nonetheless it does look like Johnson and the Conservative Party have been played by Putin and Putin shills. Perhaps played like a violin.
Played extremely badly. The amount of damage done to Russian forces by UK supplied and trained solo diera demonstrates that quite clearly.
I don't know. Lebedev Minor found his way into the HoL against the advice of the security services.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
History suggests, though, that with outside support, countries can rebuild remarkably quickly.
I believe West German GDP was reaching new highs by 1950 in the early 1950s.
The Marshall Plan was atypically generous
How did the country that received the most generous chunk of Marshall money manage to fcuk up?
Assuming that was the UK (I don’t know) I’m not surprised that the Attlee government spent it rather than invested in productive capacity
It was a long time ago, but the Attlee government engaged in a great deal of austerity to ensure the books balanced.
If it can be criticised, it is probably for trying to maintain the Empire and military spending for too long.
Acquiring our atom bomb, and other great power pretensions didn't come cheap.
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Yes, there are many reasons one might dislike this PM, but anyone saying he’s in the pocket of the Russians is basically telling themselves a fairy story because they already dislike him. Stick with the other reasons to dislike him guys - he ain’t Donald Trump. Otherwise you might find you’ve cried wolf too often when we really do have a corrupt PM in the pocket of a foreign power one day.
Yes. He's in the pocket of the very rich, not of the Russians. Some of the very rich happen to be Russians, that's all. But the very rich are from lots of other places as well, including the UK.
Actually fewer of the rich voted for Boris in 2019 than usually voted Tory.
Only 40% of voters earning over £70,000 a year (the highest earning group in the Yougov post election survey) voted Conservative in 2019 compared to 43% overall. In 2015 however 51% of those earning over £70,000 voted for Cameron's Conservative party compared to only 37% overall.
But you're always telling us that the rich are more intelligent or at least better ediccated at Oxford etc because they can afford it, so they are better educated etc. Which says something about Conservative policy under Mr Johnson even by your own data.
Should also be noted Cameron narrowly won graduates in 2015 too, unlike Boris in 2019
Well, there you are. THe current Conservative Party is losing the intelligent people.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I can't begin to imaging the problems we'd be storing up for the future by turning Putin's feverish and mad accusations into reality.
Personally I think that is a perhaps partly a red herring, and that "republics" etc perhaps have a right to self-determination.
There are also plenty of pieces of other countries Ru has obtained by conquest quite recently.
This is an interesting and appalling thread on life in the Donetsk "republic", published last August. One of the strongest motivators of Ukranian resistance is that life in a Russian separatist Republic is very grim.
Jesus. If that is just halfway true Putin has taken Russia right back to Stalin-esque repression and abuse.
Absolute power, and what it does. Grim
I've read other threads on the "Republics", and while they are not quite as bad as that one, life in them appears to be very fart from fun.
Coincidentally I am just watching episode 9 of series 2 of "Rick Stein's Cornwall", when he talks about Cornishman William Golding, the writer (whose murderer still walks this earth)
Apparently Lord of the Flies was inspired by Golding's experience of WW2 which was - to my surprise - intense and profound. He was in command of a missile firing boat off Normandy in 1944
Golding wrote the book to illustrate how the most civilised Germans could descend into sadistic depravity, very quickly, and that the same is true of all humanity
A lesson we have to relearn, again and again
This also points up why Democracy is ultimately so much better. It is the one unique defence against this barbaric element in the human psyche. The evil and the powerful can be brought to account
This war teaches us much....
Good post but... William Golding 'whose murderer still walks this earth'?
According to wiki:
"In 1985, Golding and his wife moved to a house called Tullimaar in Perranarworthal, near Truro, Cornwall. He died of heart failure eight years later on 19 June 1993. His body was buried in the parish churchyard of Bowerchalke near his former home and the Wiltshire county border with Hampshire and Dorset."
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Johnson is not a Putinist, nonetheless it does look like Johnson and the Conservative Party have been played by Putin and Putin shills. Perhaps played like a violin.
Played extremely badly. The amount of damage done to Russian forces by UK supplied and trained solo diera demonstrates that quite clearly.
I don't know. Lebedev Minor found his way into the HoL against the advice of the security services.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I can't begin to imaging the problems we'd be storing up for the future by turning Putin's feverish and mad accusations into reality.
Personally I think that is a perhaps partly a red herring, and that "republics" etc perhaps have a right to self-determination.
There are also plenty of pieces of other countries Ru has obtained by conquest quite recently.
This is an interesting and appalling thread on life in the Donetsk "republic", published last August. One of the strongest motivators of Ukranian resistance is that life in a Russian separatist Republic is very grim.
Jesus. If that is just halfway true Putin has taken Russia right back to Stalin-esque repression and abuse.
Absolute power, and what it does. Grim
I've read other threads on the "Republics", and while they are not quite as bad as that one, life in them appears to be very fart from fun.
Coincidentally I am just watching episode 9 of series 2 of "Rick Stein's Cornwall", when he talks about Cornishman William Golding, the writer (whose murderer still walks this earth)
Apparently Lord of the Flies was inspired by Golding's experience of WW2 which was - to my surprise - intense and profound. He was in command of a missile firing boat off Normandy in 1944
Golding wrote the book to illustrate how the most civilised Germans could descend into sadistic depravity, very quickly, and that the same is true of all humanity
A lesson we have to relearn, again and again
This also points up why Democracy is ultimately so much better. It is the one unique defence against this barbaric element in the human psyche. The evil and the powerful can be brought to account
This war teaches us much....
'whose murderer still walks this earth'
?
Do tell.
Golding taught at my school, Bishop Wordsworth in Salisbury. He died of heart failure, apparently. Perhaps @Leon believes someone startled him to death?
Maybe it was that oversized knapped-flint, er, accessory?
A better analogy than Boris's EU vs. Britain = Russia vs. Ukraine one would be a post-separation Scotland wanting to join the EU, but RUK, for strategic reasons, is very anti. It offers the RUK-friendly Scottish PM a wide-ranging trade deal with RUK if Scotland gives up it's attempt to join the EU. However, it all kicks off on the Scottish side, as the attempt by RUK to decide the course of Scotland's future is resented by many, and many others frankly just hate the bones of the English, so it doesn't matter that there's probably more benefit in the UK deal than the EU deal for Scotland, protests kick off (aided by the EU) and unseat the RUK favouring PM, replacing him with an EU-loving one. There's pretty much open dislike from then on, RUK accusing the EU of unwarranted interference in it's back yard, the EU insisting that the UK is being a bully and attempting to thwart the will of the Scottish people. Scottish people growing steadily less pro-RUK, except a significant English minority, who are just getting more and more nervous. Etc.
I’m missing the bit where, in any circumstances, thus would justify rUK invading Scotland, razing Edinburgh to the ground, deporting the surviving population to Wales and repopulating the country with a bunch of Sassenachs
Well, it doesn't, as it doesn't in Russia's case either, but yet it's not impossible to see circumstances where the scenario might get really ugly.
I am confident that, despite @HYUFD entreaties, rUK would not invade Scotland.
In the same way as I know that Mrs T would not have nuked Argentina
No, we could just refuse Scotland a trade deal if they joined the EU instead.
Though if a Scottish nationalist government was ever granted an indyref2 and Yes won then the Scottish borders could well become the Scottish Donbass region, a disputed region claimed by both the rUK and Scottish government with a Unionist pro British majority stoll
No it wouldn’t. It just wouldn’t.
The Borders voted 67% to stay in the UK in 2014 and neighbour England, in fact it would be even more so
'The Borders voted 67% to stay in the UK in 2014 and neighbour England'
Lovely little Feudian slip.
I hope “Feudian” was an inspired malapropism not just a typo…
I wish. Sigmund pinned me from beyond the grave obvs, or I haven't got used to my new mini keyboard.
On a tangent, anyone wanting some entertaining tosh with good looking actors & decent production values, they could do worse than Freud on Netflix. Turn of the century Vienna looks lovely.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I can't begin to imaging the problems we'd be storing up for the future by turning Putin's feverish and mad accusations into reality.
Personally I think that is a perhaps partly a red herring, and that "republics" etc perhaps have a right to self-determination.
There are also plenty of pieces of other countries Ru has obtained by conquest quite recently.
This is an interesting and appalling thread on life in the Donetsk "republic", published last August. One of the strongest motivators of Ukranian resistance is that life in a Russian separatist Republic is very grim.
Jesus. If that is just halfway true Putin has taken Russia right back to Stalin-esque repression and abuse.
Absolute power, and what it does. Grim
I've read other threads on the "Republics", and while they are not quite as bad as that one, life in them appears to be very fart from fun.
Coincidentally I am just watching episode 9 of series 2 of "Rick Stein's Cornwall", when he talks about Cornishman William Golding, the writer (whose murderer still walks this earth)
Apparently Lord of the Flies was inspired by Golding's experience of WW2 which was - to my surprise - intense and profound. He was in command of a missile firing boat off Normandy in 1944
Golding wrote the book to illustrate how the most civilised Germans could descend into sadistic depravity, very quickly, and that the same is true of all humanity
A lesson we have to relearn, again and again
This also points up why Democracy is ultimately so much better. It is the one unique defence against this barbaric element in the human psyche. The evil and the powerful can be brought to account
This war teaches us much....
Good post but... William Golding 'whose murderer still walks this earth'?
According to wiki:
"In 1985, Golding and his wife moved to a house called Tullimaar in Perranarworthal, near Truro, Cornwall. He died of heart failure eight years later on 19 June 1993. His body was buried in the parish churchyard of Bowerchalke near his former home and the Wiltshire county border with Hampshire and Dorset."
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Re: "compelled" you do have a wee point, though what I meant to say was that it compelled his highly public touting of arms shipments.
Re: bollocks, kindly keep yours to yourself. Seeing as how you've already aired 'em 3 times in your last 4 comments
Except now every country is now jumping up and down about how much they are doing to help out. Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?
I’ll call you out on your claims he is a Putinist any time I like.
"Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?"
No, but of course I never said that, or anything close.
Call out whatever you wish to call out for whatever. Just stop flaunting your family jewels.
Unless of course they are the essence of your argument?
You implied it by suggesting the only reason he is speaking publicly about it is because he’s Putin’s stooge. How do you explain everyone else doing the same then?
Because he's a proven liar, and (most) of the others are not?
Ah ok, so it’s based on your prejudices about the man, not actually facts.
Fact that Boris Johnson is a proven liar is not a fact?
No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one.
I've actually made several points, which you simply brush off.
Such as Boris making a security threat a peer of the realm, to mention but one.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
History suggests, though, that with outside support, countries can rebuild remarkably quickly.
I believe West German GDP was reaching new highs by 1950 in the early 1950s.
The Marshall Plan was atypically generous
Sure: but Ukraine would be supported financially not just by the US but also by all of Western Europe.
I think so, not just in aid terms but also favourable trade deals etc.
You don’t want to be in the position to find out, because it means something awful has happened, but rebuilding your entire economy and infrastructure form scratch almost has to boost efficiency and productivity in the long run so long as you can manage down the inevitable corruption.
While Ukraine has made much progress since 1991, and seems to be very motivated to join the EU, it does have a post Soviet economy not dissimilar to Russia in terms of corruption and oligarchs.
I am all in favour of Ukranian integration into the mainstream of Europe, but it has a hell of a lot to do, even before war damage.
Only someone in the wildest fringes of fruit-loopiness could think it would be appropriate to apply normal standards to a country suffering the kind of systematic destruction Ukraine is experiencing now.
Bearing in mind that the world's only excuse for not preventing it is our fear that we might suffer similar consequences.
Happily, who does or does not get to join the EU is no longer our concern.
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Re: "compelled" you do have a wee point, though what I meant to say was that it compelled his highly public touting of arms shipments.
Re: bollocks, kindly keep yours to yourself. Seeing as how you've already aired 'em 3 times in your last 4 comments
Except now every country is now jumping up and down about how much they are doing to help out. Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?
I’ll call you out on your claims he is a Putinist any time I like.
"Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?"
No, but of course I never said that, or anything close.
Call out whatever you wish to call out for whatever. Just stop flaunting your family jewels.
Unless of course they are the essence of your argument?
You implied it by suggesting the only reason he is speaking publicly about it is because he’s Putin’s stooge. How do you explain everyone else doing the same then?
Because he's a proven liar, and (most) of the others are not?
Ah ok, so it’s based on your prejudices about the man, not actually facts.
Fact that Boris Johnson is a proven liar is not a fact?
No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one.
I've actually made several points, which you simply brush off.
Such as Boris making a security threat a peer of the realm, to mention but one.
No, that's not evidence that he's a Putinist. The appointment has done nothing to further Putin's agenda. Your other piece of evidence was the arms shipments to Ukraine. How's that working out for Putin?
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I can't begin to imaging the problems we'd be storing up for the future by turning Putin's feverish and mad accusations into reality.
Personally I think that is a perhaps partly a red herring, and that "republics" etc perhaps have a right to self-determination.
There are also plenty of pieces of other countries Ru has obtained by conquest quite recently.
This is an interesting and appalling thread on life in the Donetsk "republic", published last August. One of the strongest motivators of Ukranian resistance is that life in a Russian separatist Republic is very grim.
Jesus. If that is just halfway true Putin has taken Russia right back to Stalin-esque repression and abuse.
Absolute power, and what it does. Grim
I've read other threads on the "Republics", and while they are not quite as bad as that one, life in them appears to be very fart from fun.
Coincidentally I am just watching episode 9 of series 2 of "Rick Stein's Cornwall", when he talks about Cornishman William Golding, the writer (whose murderer still walks this earth)
Apparently Lord of the Flies was inspired by Golding's experience of WW2 which was - to my surprise - intense and profound. He was in command of a missile firing boat off Normandy in 1944
Golding wrote the book to illustrate how the most civilised Germans could descend into sadistic depravity, very quickly, and that the same is true of all humanity
A lesson we have to relearn, again and again
This also points up why Democracy is ultimately so much better. It is the one unique defence against this barbaric element in the human psyche. The evil and the powerful can be brought to account
This war teaches us much....
Good post but... William Golding 'whose murderer still walks this earth'?
According to wiki:
"In 1985, Golding and his wife moved to a house called Tullimaar in Perranarworthal, near Truro, Cornwall. He died of heart failure eight years later on 19 June 1993. His body was buried in the parish churchyard of Bowerchalke near his former home and the Wiltshire county border with Hampshire and Dorset."
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Johnson is not a Putinist, nonetheless it does look like Johnson and the Conservative Party have been played by Putin and Putin shills. Perhaps played like a violin.
So what did they get?
The leading possibility there is surely too obvious to have to repeat.
Because it denies the British voter agency?
Because they couldn’t have voted for what they wanted unless they were misled by some evil foreign power. After all, *the* Establishment was united in telling them not to be so silly
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Yes, there are many reasons one might dislike this PM, but anyone saying he’s in the pocket of the Russians is basically telling themselves a fairy story because they already dislike him. Stick with the other reasons to dislike him guys - he ain’t Donald Trump. Otherwise you might find you’ve cried wolf too often when we really do have a corrupt PM in the pocket of a foreign power one day.
Yes. He's in the pocket of the very rich, not of the Russians. Some of the very rich happen to be Russians, that's all. But the very rich are from lots of other places as well, including the UK.
Actually fewer of the rich voted for Boris in 2019 than usually voted Tory.
Only 40% of voters earning over £70,000 a year (the highest earning group in the Yougov post election survey) voted Conservative in 2019 compared to 43% overall. In 2015 however 51% of those earning over £70,000 voted for Cameron's Conservative party compared to only 37% overall.
But you're always telling us that the rich are more intelligent or at least better ediccated at Oxford etc because they can afford it, so they are better educated etc. Which says something about Conservative policy under Mr Johnson even by your own data.
Should also be noted Cameron narrowly won graduates in 2015 too, unlike Boris in 2019
Well, there you are. THe current Conservative Party is losing the intelligent people.
Yes but Boris also won a bigger majority in 2019 than Cameron in 2015.
As Adlai Stevenson replied when complimented in the 1956 presidential election 'you have the votes of all intelligent people'. 'Sadly Madam, that is not enough to win!''
The average voter is not an intellectual, they have GCSEs but not a degree
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Yes, there are many reasons one might dislike this PM, but anyone saying he’s in the pocket of the Russians is basically telling themselves a fairy story because they already dislike him. Stick with the other reasons to dislike him guys - he ain’t Donald Trump. Otherwise you might find you’ve cried wolf too often when we really do have a corrupt PM in the pocket of a foreign power one day.
Yes. He's in the pocket of the very rich, not of the Russians. Some of the very rich happen to be Russians, that's all. But the very rich are from lots of other places as well, including the UK.
We saw it, in different ways with Cameron and Blair too. Almost a fanboy/groupie thing with the rich. Makes me wonder if there’s anything in just paying the PM (whoever is PM) actual mega bucks so they don’t need to borrow villas or the like. Trouble is you almost preemptively reward corruption risk. And the public will never support it.
That's why I invented the concept of a new app 'Populi', that allows users to donate a pound (just one per year) to a politician of their choice, to reward them for a decision, stance, or activity. Politicians could make far more money by adopting popular policies than they could by grubbing around billionaires. Its the gig economy for politicians.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Kaliningrad would undoubtedly vote to stay with Russia. So it would be a rather pointless gesture.
I'm not sure that the provision would be pointless; there are plenty of other areas depending how far it goes.
How would the former (part of) Karelia now in Russia vote wrt rejoining Finland, for example?
82% Russian in 2010, only 7.4% Karelian, 1.4% Finnish
I don't think you can call it.
All the areas of Ukraine voted for independence in the 1991 Referendum, including the 'Russian' ones.
Karelia isn't part of the Ukraine. And you said "rejoining Finland", not "vote for independence".
Why does Ukraine constantly have the definite article put in front of it, is it a cold war remnant or some such. Not just yourself, the number of times I've heard on the radio an incorrect "'the' Ukraine" is phenomonal.
It's not incorrect. Geographic regions often take a definite article (eg, the Dordogne) and sometimes they are the name of a country, eg the Congo, the Sudan.
It used to be more common. People used to say the Lebanon, the Argentine.
The Ukrainians prefer us not to use the article, on the grounds it makes them sound like a region of Russia (although it may have actually been named in reference to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). Western Ukraine used to have other names eg Galicia, Volhynia, Lodomeria.
It makes no difference in Ukrainian or Russian, neither of which language uses definite or indefinite articles
"I live in United Kingdom" sounds wrong to me. As does "I am going to Czech".
"I live in the Congo" sounds right. "I live in the France" doesn't.
Custom and use mostly.
Actually my Czech friend (he left in 1968 for some reason but does speak the language) tends to call his country just Czech. But then the Czech Česko is a sort of adjectival form so it probably makes sense.
Ah but which one? There were three Batmans, produced in 1943, 1966 and 1989. (Which makes me think, weren't we due another Batman in 2012?)
...
That'll be the effect of low-energy lightbulbs for you.
That's a funny graphic, but I think the films got brighter after Batman, culminating in a very bright, very tacky dayglo look to Batman and Robin, before getting darker again. Still funny though.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I can't begin to imaging the problems we'd be storing up for the future by turning Putin's feverish and mad accusations into reality.
Personally I think that is a perhaps partly a red herring, and that "republics" etc perhaps have a right to self-determination.
There are also plenty of pieces of other countries Ru has obtained by conquest quite recently.
This is an interesting and appalling thread on life in the Donetsk "republic", published last August. One of the strongest motivators of Ukranian resistance is that life in a Russian separatist Republic is very grim.
Jesus. If that is just halfway true Putin has taken Russia right back to Stalin-esque repression and abuse.
Absolute power, and what it does. Grim
I've read other threads on the "Republics", and while they are not quite as bad as that one, life in them appears to be very fart from fun.
Coincidentally I am just watching episode 9 of series 2 of "Rick Stein's Cornwall", when he talks about Cornishman William Golding, the writer (whose murderer still walks this earth)
Apparently Lord of the Flies was inspired by Golding's experience of WW2 which was - to my surprise - intense and profound. He was in command of a missile firing boat off Normandy in 1944
Golding wrote the book to illustrate how the most civilised Germans could descend into sadistic depravity, very quickly, and that the same is true of all humanity
A lesson we have to relearn, again and again
This also points up why Democracy is ultimately so much better. It is the one unique defence against this barbaric element in the human psyche. The evil and the powerful can be brought to account
This war teaches us much....
Good post but... William Golding 'whose murderer still walks this earth'?
According to wiki:
"In 1985, Golding and his wife moved to a house called Tullimaar in Perranarworthal, near Truro, Cornwall. He died of heart failure eight years later on 19 June 1993. His body was buried in the parish churchyard of Bowerchalke near his former home and the Wiltshire county border with Hampshire and Dorset."
A better analogy than Boris's EU vs. Britain = Russia vs. Ukraine one would be a post-separation Scotland wanting to join the EU, but RUK, for strategic reasons, is very anti. It offers the RUK-friendly Scottish PM a wide-ranging trade deal with RUK if Scotland gives up it's attempt to join the EU. However, it all kicks off on the Scottish side, as the attempt by RUK to decide the course of Scotland's future is resented by many, and many others frankly just hate the bones of the English, so it doesn't matter that there's probably more benefit in the UK deal than the EU deal for Scotland, protests kick off (aided by the EU) and unseat the RUK favouring PM, replacing him with an EU-loving one. There's pretty much open dislike from then on, RUK accusing the EU of unwarranted interference in it's back yard, the EU insisting that the UK is being a bully and attempting to thwart the will of the Scottish people. Scottish people growing steadily less pro-RUK, except a significant English minority, who are just getting more and more nervous. Etc.
I’m missing the bit where, in any circumstances, thus would justify rUK invading Scotland, razing Edinburgh to the ground, deporting the surviving population to Wales and repopulating the country with a bunch of Sassenachs
Well, it doesn't, as it doesn't in Russia's case either, but yet it's not impossible to see circumstances where the scenario might get really ugly.
I am confident that, despite @HYUFD entreaties, rUK would not invade Scotland.
In the same way as I know that Mrs T would not have nuked Argentina
No, we could just refuse Scotland a trade deal if they joined the EU instead.
Though if a Scottish nationalist government was ever granted an indyref2 and Yes won then the Scottish borders could well become the Scottish Donbass region, a disputed region claimed by both the rUK and Scottish government with a Unionist pro British majority stoll
No it wouldn’t. It just wouldn’t.
The Borders voted 67% to stay in the UK in 2014 and neighbour England, in fact it would be even more so
'The Borders voted 67% to stay in the UK in 2014 and neighbour England'
Lovely little Feudian slip.
And use of the article "The Borders"
Yep, that pesky definite article pops up with those other areas/regions so beloved by greater British nationalists, 'the' Orkneys and 'the' Shetlands. I'm sensing a pattern..
In any case HYUFD is talking rubbish. There is no area called the Borders or The Borders.
Yes there is, Dumfriesshire, Roxburghshire and Berwickshire etc
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
History suggests, though, that with outside support, countries can rebuild remarkably quickly.
I believe West German GDP was reaching new highs by 1950 in the early 1950s.
The Marshall Plan was atypically generous
Sure: but Ukraine would be supported financially not just by the US but also by all of Western Europe.
I think so, not just in aid terms but also favourable trade deals etc.
You don’t want to be in the position to find out, because it means something awful has happened, but rebuilding your entire economy and infrastructure form scratch almost has to boost efficiency and productivity in the long run so long as you can manage down the inevitable corruption.
While Ukraine has made much progress since 1991, and seems to be very motivated to join the EU, it does have a post Soviet economy not dissimilar to Russia in terms of corruption and oligarchs.
I am all in favour of Ukranian integration into the mainstream of Europe, but it has a hell of a lot to do, even before war damage.
Only someone in the wildest fringes of fruit-loopiness could think it would be appropriate to apply normal standards to a country suffering the kind of systematic destruction Ukraine is experiencing now.
Bearing in mind that the world's only excuse for not preventing it is our fear that we might suffer similar consequences.
Happily, who does or does not get to join the EU is no longer our concern.
Yes, sorry. Let's concentrate on investigating the murder of William Golding.
Seems the Conservative strategists need to start on the Irish question. Shore up the home counties babushkas.
Slightly more seriously.... the inverted population pyramid is doing strange things to our politics. Who would have thought the elderly would be a so reactionary. Do we age into into parochialism, is there a biological switch?
The highest vote for Le Pen in France comes from 25 to 50 year olds, not pensioners
I thought it was - proportionately - the 18 to 24 group where Le Pen's support was strongest.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
History suggests, though, that with outside support, countries can rebuild remarkably quickly.
I believe West German GDP was reaching new highs by 1950 in the early 1950s.
The Marshall Plan was atypically generous
Sure: but Ukraine would be supported financially not just by the US but also by all of Western Europe.
I think so, not just in aid terms but also favourable trade deals etc.
You don’t want to be in the position to find out, because it means something awful has happened, but rebuilding your entire economy and infrastructure form scratch almost has to boost efficiency and productivity in the long run so long as you can manage down the inevitable corruption.
While Ukraine has made much progress since 1991, and seems to be very motivated to join the EU, it does have a post Soviet economy not dissimilar to Russia in terms of corruption and oligarchs.
I am all in favour of Ukranian integration into the mainstream of Europe, but it has a hell of a lot to do, even before war damage.
Well, yes, perhaps because Russia had spent the last couple of decades interfering with Ukraine's politics. Zelinsky came in vowing to change that, and his predecessor apparently made some moves.
It'll be interesting to see how a Ukraine free from Russian interference manages.
According to Transparency International, there has been a steady improvement in Perception of Corruption (CPI) Index since 2013, but it is still ranked 122 out of 180 countries (Russia: 136/180, UKr 2013: 144/177, Ru 2013: 127/177 ). A chunk of that will be the military, which is massively improved.
Yes, while there is quite obvious support for Ukranians in their defence of their homeland we should not be blind to the difficulties it will have integrating its economy with Europe's, even before Putin's war.
Not least that restructuring economies causes a lot of short term difficulties, even if there is gain long term. Certainly that has been the experience of other countries joining the EU.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I can't begin to imaging the problems we'd be storing up for the future by turning Putin's feverish and mad accusations into reality.
Personally I think that is a perhaps partly a red herring, and that "republics" etc perhaps have a right to self-determination.
There are also plenty of pieces of other countries Ru has obtained by conquest quite recently.
This is an interesting and appalling thread on life in the Donetsk "republic", published last August. One of the strongest motivators of Ukranian resistance is that life in a Russian separatist Republic is very grim.
Jesus. If that is just halfway true Putin has taken Russia right back to Stalin-esque repression and abuse.
Absolute power, and what it does. Grim
I've read other threads on the "Republics", and while they are not quite as bad as that one, life in them appears to be very fart from fun.
Coincidentally I am just watching episode 9 of series 2 of "Rick Stein's Cornwall", when he talks about Cornishman William Golding, the writer (whose murderer still walks this earth)
Apparently Lord of the Flies was inspired by Golding's experience of WW2 which was - to my surprise - intense and profound. He was in command of a missile firing boat off Normandy in 1944
Golding wrote the book to illustrate how the most civilised Germans could descend into sadistic depravity, very quickly, and that the same is true of all humanity
A lesson we have to relearn, again and again
This also points up why Democracy is ultimately so much better. It is the one unique defence against this barbaric element in the human psyche. The evil and the powerful can be brought to account
This war teaches us much....
Good post but... William Golding 'whose murderer still walks this earth'?
According to wiki:
"In 1985, Golding and his wife moved to a house called Tullimaar in Perranarworthal, near Truro, Cornwall. He died of heart failure eight years later on 19 June 1993. His body was buried in the parish churchyard of Bowerchalke near his former home and the Wiltshire county border with Hampshire and Dorset."
Leon killed him? How else would he know?
Perhaps he was too fond of steak - cows still walk the earth.
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Re: "compelled" you do have a wee point, though what I meant to say was that it compelled his highly public touting of arms shipments.
Re: bollocks, kindly keep yours to yourself. Seeing as how you've already aired 'em 3 times in your last 4 comments
Except now every country is now jumping up and down about how much they are doing to help out. Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?
I’ll call you out on your claims he is a Putinist any time I like.
"Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?"
No, but of course I never said that, or anything close.
Call out whatever you wish to call out for whatever. Just stop flaunting your family jewels.
Unless of course they are the essence of your argument?
You implied it by suggesting the only reason he is speaking publicly about it is because he’s Putin’s stooge. How do you explain everyone else doing the same then?
Because he's a proven liar, and (most) of the others are not?
Ah ok, so it’s based on your prejudices about the man, not actually facts.
Fact that Boris Johnson is a proven liar is not a fact?
No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one.
I've actually made several points, which you simply brush off.
Such as Boris making a security threat a peer of the realm, to mention but one.
No, that's not evidence that he's a Putinist. The appointment has done nothing to further Putin's agenda. Your other piece of evidence was the arms shipments to Ukraine. How's that working out for Putin?
Nope. Because YOU said (and I quote)
"No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one."
But yours truly DID provide facts (such as "Lord" Lebedev) which you have NOT refuted, just pooh-poohed.
NOT the same thing. Unless you think your utterances are ipso facto definitive? (Are you & HYUFD twins?)
Seems the Conservative strategists need to start on the Irish question. Shore up the home counties babushkas.
Slightly more seriously.... the inverted population pyramid is doing strange things to our politics. Who would have thought the elderly would be a so reactionary. Do we age into into parochialism, is there a biological switch?
The highest vote for Le Pen in France comes from 25 to 50 year olds, not pensioners
I thought it was - proportionately - the 18 to 24 group where Le Pen's support was strongest.
No, in the 2017 runoff Le Pen got only 34% of 18 to 24s but over 40% of 25 to 49 year olds
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
History suggests, though, that with outside support, countries can rebuild remarkably quickly.
I believe West German GDP was reaching new highs by 1950 in the early 1950s.
The Marshall Plan was atypically generous
Sure: but Ukraine would be supported financially not just by the US but also by all of Western Europe.
I think so, not just in aid terms but also favourable trade deals etc.
You don’t want to be in the position to find out, because it means something awful has happened, but rebuilding your entire economy and infrastructure form scratch almost has to boost efficiency and productivity in the long run so long as you can manage down the inevitable corruption.
While Ukraine has made much progress since 1991, and seems to be very motivated to join the EU, it does have a post Soviet economy not dissimilar to Russia in terms of corruption and oligarchs.
I am all in favour of Ukranian integration into the mainstream of Europe, but it has a hell of a lot to do, even before war damage.
Only someone in the wildest fringes of fruit-loopiness could think it would be appropriate to apply normal standards to a country suffering the kind of systematic destruction Ukraine is experiencing now.
Bearing in mind that the world's only excuse for not preventing it is our fear that we might suffer similar consequences.
Happily, who does or does not get to join the EU is no longer our concern.
Yes, sorry. Let's concentrate on investigating the murder of William Golding.
Yes let’s! All we have to go on is an unsubstantiated claim from an anonymous flint knapper on the Internet...
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Re: "compelled" you do have a wee point, though what I meant to say was that it compelled his highly public touting of arms shipments.
Re: bollocks, kindly keep yours to yourself. Seeing as how you've already aired 'em 3 times in your last 4 comments
Except now every country is now jumping up and down about how much they are doing to help out. Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?
I’ll call you out on your claims he is a Putinist any time I like.
"Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?"
No, but of course I never said that, or anything close.
Call out whatever you wish to call out for whatever. Just stop flaunting your family jewels.
Unless of course they are the essence of your argument?
You implied it by suggesting the only reason he is speaking publicly about it is because he’s Putin’s stooge. How do you explain everyone else doing the same then?
Because he's a proven liar, and (most) of the others are not?
Ah ok, so it’s based on your prejudices about the man, not actually facts.
Fact that Boris Johnson is a proven liar is not a fact?
No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one.
I've actually made several points, which you simply brush off.
Such as Boris making a security threat a peer of the realm, to mention but one.
No, that's not evidence that he's a Putinist. The appointment has done nothing to further Putin's agenda. Your other piece of evidence was the arms shipments to Ukraine. How's that working out for Putin?
Nope. Because YOU said (and I quote)
"No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one."
But yours truly DID provide facts (such as "Lord" Lebedev) which you have NOT refuted, just pooh-poohed.
NOT the same thing. Unless you think your utterances are ipso facto definitive? (Are you & HYUFD twins?)
No, those are not facts proving he is a Putinist, or his stooge. Or are you seriously claiming that weapons shipments from the UK to Ukraine prove he is one?
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I can't begin to imaging the problems we'd be storing up for the future by turning Putin's feverish and mad accusations into reality.
Personally I think that is a perhaps partly a red herring, and that "republics" etc perhaps have a right to self-determination.
There are also plenty of pieces of other countries Ru has obtained by conquest quite recently.
This is an interesting and appalling thread on life in the Donetsk "republic", published last August. One of the strongest motivators of Ukranian resistance is that life in a Russian separatist Republic is very grim.
Jesus. If that is just halfway true Putin has taken Russia right back to Stalin-esque repression and abuse.
Absolute power, and what it does. Grim
I've read other threads on the "Republics", and while they are not quite as bad as that one, life in them appears to be very fart from fun.
Coincidentally I am just watching episode 9 of series 2 of "Rick Stein's Cornwall", when he talks about Cornishman William Golding, the writer (whose murderer still walks this earth)
Apparently Lord of the Flies was inspired by Golding's experience of WW2 which was - to my surprise - intense and profound. He was in command of a missile firing boat off Normandy in 1944
Golding wrote the book to illustrate how the most civilised Germans could descend into sadistic depravity, very quickly, and that the same is true of all humanity
A lesson we have to relearn, again and again
This also points up why Democracy is ultimately so much better. It is the one unique defence against this barbaric element in the human psyche. The evil and the powerful can be brought to account
This war teaches us much....
'whose murderer still walks this earth'
?
Do tell.
Golding taught at my school, Bishop Wordsworth in Salisbury. He died of heart failure, apparently. Perhaps @Leon believes someone startled him to death?
For @Leon to know that (contrary to popular belief) Golding was murdered, and that his killer still walks the earth, suggests he has some inside information.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Kaliningrad would undoubtedly vote to stay with Russia. So it would be a rather pointless gesture.
I'm not sure that the provision would be pointless; there are plenty of other areas depending how far it goes.
How would the former (part of) Karelia now in Russia vote wrt rejoining Finland, for example?
82% Russian in 2010, only 7.4% Karelian, 1.4% Finnish
I don't think you can call it.
All the areas of Ukraine voted for independence in the 1991 Referendum, including the 'Russian' ones.
Karelia isn't part of the Ukraine. And you said "rejoining Finland", not "vote for independence".
Why does Ukraine constantly have the definite article put in front of it, is it a cold war remnant or some such. Not just yourself, the number of times I've heard on the radio an incorrect "'the' Ukraine" is phenomonal.
It's not incorrect. Geographic regions often take a definite article (eg, the Dordogne) and sometimes they are the name of a country, eg the Congo, the Sudan.
It used to be more common. People used to say the Lebanon, the Argentine.
The Ukrainians prefer us not to use the article, on the grounds it makes them sound like a region of Russia (although it may have actually been named in reference to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). Western Ukraine used to have other names eg Galicia, Volhynia, Lodomeria.
It makes no difference in Ukrainian or Russian, neither of which language uses definite or indefinite articles
"I live in United Kingdom" sounds wrong to me. As does "I am going to Czech".
"I live in the Congo" sounds right. "I live in the France" doesn't.
Custom and use mostly.
Actually my Czech friend (he left in 1968 for some reason but does speak the language) tends to call his country just Czech. But then the Czech Česko is a sort of adjectival form so it probably makes sense.
Czechia.
The Czech government approved Czechia as the official English short name in 2016.[28] The short name has been listed by the United Nations[29] and is used by other organizations such as the European Union,[30] the CIA,[31] and Google Maps.[32]
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I can't begin to imaging the problems we'd be storing up for the future by turning Putin's feverish and mad accusations into reality.
Personally I think that is a perhaps partly a red herring, and that "republics" etc perhaps have a right to self-determination.
There are also plenty of pieces of other countries Ru has obtained by conquest quite recently.
This is an interesting and appalling thread on life in the Donetsk "republic", published last August. One of the strongest motivators of Ukranian resistance is that life in a Russian separatist Republic is very grim.
Jesus. If that is just halfway true Putin has taken Russia right back to Stalin-esque repression and abuse.
Absolute power, and what it does. Grim
I've read other threads on the "Republics", and while they are not quite as bad as that one, life in them appears to be very fart from fun.
Coincidentally I am just watching episode 9 of series 2 of "Rick Stein's Cornwall", when he talks about Cornishman William Golding, the writer (whose murderer still walks this earth)
Apparently Lord of the Flies was inspired by Golding's experience of WW2 which was - to my surprise - intense and profound. He was in command of a missile firing boat off Normandy in 1944
Golding wrote the book to illustrate how the most civilised Germans could descend into sadistic depravity, very quickly, and that the same is true of all humanity
A lesson we have to relearn, again and again
This also points up why Democracy is ultimately so much better. It is the one unique defence against this barbaric element in the human psyche. The evil and the powerful can be brought to account
This war teaches us much....
'whose murderer still walks this earth'
?
Do tell.
Golding taught at my school, Bishop Wordsworth in Salisbury. He died of heart failure, apparently. Perhaps @Leon believes someone startled him to death?
For @Leon to know that (contrary to popular belief) Golding was murdered, and that his killer still walks the earth, suggests he has some inside information.
I believe @leon to be old enough and to have some Cornish links. Good enough for me. Time to ring the coppers?
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I can't begin to imaging the problems we'd be storing up for the future by turning Putin's feverish and mad accusations into reality.
Personally I think that is a perhaps partly a red herring, and that "republics" etc perhaps have a right to self-determination.
There are also plenty of pieces of other countries Ru has obtained by conquest quite recently.
This is an interesting and appalling thread on life in the Donetsk "republic", published last August. One of the strongest motivators of Ukranian resistance is that life in a Russian separatist Republic is very grim.
Jesus. If that is just halfway true Putin has taken Russia right back to Stalin-esque repression and abuse.
Absolute power, and what it does. Grim
I've read other threads on the "Republics", and while they are not quite as bad as that one, life in them appears to be very fart from fun.
Coincidentally I am just watching episode 9 of series 2 of "Rick Stein's Cornwall", when he talks about Cornishman William Golding, the writer (whose murderer still walks this earth)
Apparently Lord of the Flies was inspired by Golding's experience of WW2 which was - to my surprise - intense and profound. He was in command of a missile firing boat off Normandy in 1944
Golding wrote the book to illustrate how the most civilised Germans could descend into sadistic depravity, very quickly, and that the same is true of all humanity
A lesson we have to relearn, again and again
This also points up why Democracy is ultimately so much better. It is the one unique defence against this barbaric element in the human psyche. The evil and the powerful can be brought to account
This war teaches us much....
'whose murderer still walks this earth'
?
Do tell.
Golding taught at my school, Bishop Wordsworth in Salisbury. He died of heart failure, apparently. Perhaps @Leon believes someone startled him to death?
For @Leon to know that (contrary to popular belief) Golding was murdered, and that his killer still walks the earth, suggests he has some inside information.
That the killer walks the earth, implies a traveller...and one perhaps interested in writing...
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Re: "compelled" you do have a wee point, though what I meant to say was that it compelled his highly public touting of arms shipments.
Re: bollocks, kindly keep yours to yourself. Seeing as how you've already aired 'em 3 times in your last 4 comments
Except now every country is now jumping up and down about how much they are doing to help out. Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?
I’ll call you out on your claims he is a Putinist any time I like.
"Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?"
No, but of course I never said that, or anything close.
Call out whatever you wish to call out for whatever. Just stop flaunting your family jewels.
Unless of course they are the essence of your argument?
You implied it by suggesting the only reason he is speaking publicly about it is because he’s Putin’s stooge. How do you explain everyone else doing the same then?
Because he's a proven liar, and (most) of the others are not?
Ah ok, so it’s based on your prejudices about the man, not actually facts.
Fact that Boris Johnson is a proven liar is not a fact?
No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one.
I've actually made several points, which you simply brush off.
Such as Boris making a security threat a peer of the realm, to mention but one.
No, that's not evidence that he's a Putinist. The appointment has done nothing to further Putin's agenda. Your other piece of evidence was the arms shipments to Ukraine. How's that working out for Putin?
Nope. Because YOU said (and I quote)
"No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one."
But yours truly DID provide facts (such as "Lord" Lebedev) which you have NOT refuted, just pooh-poohed.
NOT the same thing. Unless you think your utterances are ipso facto definitive? (Are you & HYUFD twins?)
No, those are not facts proving he is a Putinist, or his stooge. Or are you seriously claiming that weapons shipments from the UK to Ukraine prove he is one?
Word twisting is NOT same thing as arguing. (Anyway, you really are NOT up to the HYUFD gold standard in this regard.)
Kindly stop putting YOUR words into MY mouth. Save your gonads AND your sophistry for yourself.
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Re: "compelled" you do have a wee point, though what I meant to say was that it compelled his highly public touting of arms shipments.
Re: bollocks, kindly keep yours to yourself. Seeing as how you've already aired 'em 3 times in your last 4 comments
Except now every country is now jumping up and down about how much they are doing to help out. Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?
I’ll call you out on your claims he is a Putinist any time I like.
"Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?"
No, but of course I never said that, or anything close.
Call out whatever you wish to call out for whatever. Just stop flaunting your family jewels.
Unless of course they are the essence of your argument?
You implied it by suggesting the only reason he is speaking publicly about it is because he’s Putin’s stooge. How do you explain everyone else doing the same then?
Because he's a proven liar, and (most) of the others are not?
Ah ok, so it’s based on your prejudices about the man, not actually facts.
Fact that Boris Johnson is a proven liar is not a fact?
No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one.
I've actually made several points, which you simply brush off.
Such as Boris making a security threat a peer of the realm, to mention but one.
No, that's not evidence that he's a Putinist. The appointment has done nothing to further Putin's agenda. Your other piece of evidence was the arms shipments to Ukraine. How's that working out for Putin?
Nope. Because YOU said (and I quote)
"No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one."
But yours truly DID provide facts (such as "Lord" Lebedev) which you have NOT refuted, just pooh-poohed.
NOT the same thing. Unless you think your utterances are ipso facto definitive? (Are you & HYUFD twins?)
François Hollande gave Putin's right-hand man Gennady Timchenko the Legion D'Honneur. Do you think he is Putin's stooge?
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Johnson is not a Putinist, nonetheless it does look like Johnson and the Conservative Party have been played by Putin and Putin shills. Perhaps played like a violin.
Played extremely badly. The amount of damage done to Russian forces by UK supplied and trained solo diera demonstrates that quite clearly.
I don't know. Lebedev Minor found his way into the HoL against the advice of the security services.
And did what?
I don't know, do you? There is much innuendo on the internet. I certainly wouldn't want to comment on issues that may or may not be subject to NDAs.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I can't begin to imaging the problems we'd be storing up for the future by turning Putin's feverish and mad accusations into reality.
Personally I think that is a perhaps partly a red herring, and that "republics" etc perhaps have a right to self-determination.
There are also plenty of pieces of other countries Ru has obtained by conquest quite recently.
This is an interesting and appalling thread on life in the Donetsk "republic", published last August. One of the strongest motivators of Ukranian resistance is that life in a Russian separatist Republic is very grim.
Jesus. If that is just halfway true Putin has taken Russia right back to Stalin-esque repression and abuse.
Absolute power, and what it does. Grim
I've read other threads on the "Republics", and while they are not quite as bad as that one, life in them appears to be very fart from fun.
Coincidentally I am just watching episode 9 of series 2 of "Rick Stein's Cornwall", when he talks about Cornishman William Golding, the writer (whose murderer still walks this earth)
Apparently Lord of the Flies was inspired by Golding's experience of WW2 which was - to my surprise - intense and profound. He was in command of a missile firing boat off Normandy in 1944
Golding wrote the book to illustrate how the most civilised Germans could descend into sadistic depravity, very quickly, and that the same is true of all humanity
A lesson we have to relearn, again and again
This also points up why Democracy is ultimately so much better. It is the one unique defence against this barbaric element in the human psyche. The evil and the powerful can be brought to account
This war teaches us much....
'whose murderer still walks this earth'
?
Do tell.
Golding taught at my school, Bishop Wordsworth in Salisbury. He died of heart failure, apparently. Perhaps @Leon believes someone startled him to death?
For @Leon to know that (contrary to popular belief) Golding was murdered, and that his killer still walks the earth, suggests he has some inside information.
A better analogy than Boris's EU vs. Britain = Russia vs. Ukraine one would be a post-separation Scotland wanting to join the EU, but RUK, for strategic reasons, is very anti. It offers the RUK-friendly Scottish PM a wide-ranging trade deal with RUK if Scotland gives up it's attempt to join the EU. However, it all kicks off on the Scottish side, as the attempt by RUK to decide the course of Scotland's future is resented by many, and many others frankly just hate the bones of the English, so it doesn't matter that there's probably more benefit in the UK deal than the EU deal for Scotland, protests kick off (aided by the EU) and unseat the RUK favouring PM, replacing him with an EU-loving one. There's pretty much open dislike from then on, RUK accusing the EU of unwarranted interference in it's back yard, the EU insisting that the UK is being a bully and attempting to thwart the will of the Scottish people. Scottish people growing steadily less pro-RUK, except a significant English minority, who are just getting more and more nervous. Etc.
I’m missing the bit where, in any circumstances, thus would justify rUK invading Scotland, razing Edinburgh to the ground, deporting the surviving population to Wales and repopulating the country with a bunch of Sassenachs
Well, it doesn't, as it doesn't in Russia's case either, but yet it's not impossible to see circumstances where the scenario might get really ugly.
I am confident that, despite @HYUFD entreaties, rUK would not invade Scotland.
In the same way as I know that Mrs T would not have nuked Argentina
No, we could just refuse Scotland a trade deal if they joined the EU instead.
Though if a Scottish nationalist government was ever granted an indyref2 and Yes won then the Scottish borders could well become the Scottish Donbass region, a disputed region claimed by both the rUK and Scottish government with a Unionist pro British majority stoll
No it wouldn’t. It just wouldn’t.
The Borders voted 67% to stay in the UK in 2014 and neighbour England, in fact it would be even more so
'The Borders voted 67% to stay in the UK in 2014 and neighbour England'
Lovely little Feudian slip.
And use of the article "The Borders"
Yep, that pesky definite article pops up with those other areas/regions so beloved by greater British nationalists, 'the' Orkneys and 'the' Shetlands. I'm sensing a pattern..
In any case HYUFD is talking rubbish. There is no area called the Borders or The Borders.
I thought the filth in Edinburgh were the Lothian And Borders police? Doesn't get much more official than that.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Kaliningrad would undoubtedly vote to stay with Russia. So it would be a rather pointless gesture.
I'm not sure that the provision would be pointless; there are plenty of other areas depending how far it goes.
How would the former (part of) Karelia now in Russia vote wrt rejoining Finland, for example?
82% Russian in 2010, only 7.4% Karelian, 1.4% Finnish
I don't think you can call it.
All the areas of Ukraine voted for independence in the 1991 Referendum, including the 'Russian' ones.
Karelia isn't part of the Ukraine. And you said "rejoining Finland", not "vote for independence".
Why does Ukraine constantly have the definite article put in front of it, is it a cold war remnant or some such. Not just yourself, the number of times I've heard on the radio an incorrect "'the' Ukraine" is phenomonal.
It's not incorrect. Geographic regions often take a definite article (eg, the Dordogne) and sometimes they are the name of a country, eg the Congo, the Sudan.
It used to be more common. People used to say the Lebanon, the Argentine.
The Ukrainians prefer us not to use the article, on the grounds it makes them sound like a region of Russia (although it may have actually been named in reference to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). Western Ukraine used to have other names eg Galicia, Volhynia, Lodomeria.
It makes no difference in Ukrainian or Russian, neither of which language uses definite or indefinite articles
"I live in United Kingdom" sounds wrong to me. As does "I am going to Czech".
"I live in the Congo" sounds right. "I live in the France" doesn't.
Custom and use mostly.
Actually my Czech friend (he left in 1968 for some reason but does speak the language) tends to call his country just Czech. But then the Czech Česko is a sort of adjectival form so it probably makes sense.
Czechia.
The Czech government approved Czechia as the official English short name in 2016.[28] The short name has been listed by the United Nations[29] and is used by other organizations such as the European Union,[30] the CIA,[31] and Google Maps.[32]
I have always wondered how foreigners (non-English-speaking ones) can purport to fashion the English language.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I can't begin to imaging the problems we'd be storing up for the future by turning Putin's feverish and mad accusations into reality.
Personally I think that is a perhaps partly a red herring, and that "republics" etc perhaps have a right to self-determination.
There are also plenty of pieces of other countries Ru has obtained by conquest quite recently.
This is an interesting and appalling thread on life in the Donetsk "republic", published last August. One of the strongest motivators of Ukranian resistance is that life in a Russian separatist Republic is very grim.
Jesus. If that is just halfway true Putin has taken Russia right back to Stalin-esque repression and abuse.
Absolute power, and what it does. Grim
I've read other threads on the "Republics", and while they are not quite as bad as that one, life in them appears to be very fart from fun.
Coincidentally I am just watching episode 9 of series 2 of "Rick Stein's Cornwall", when he talks about Cornishman William Golding, the writer (whose murderer still walks this earth)
Apparently Lord of the Flies was inspired by Golding's experience of WW2 which was - to my surprise - intense and profound. He was in command of a missile firing boat off Normandy in 1944
Golding wrote the book to illustrate how the most civilised Germans could descend into sadistic depravity, very quickly, and that the same is true of all humanity
A lesson we have to relearn, again and again
This also points up why Democracy is ultimately so much better. It is the one unique defence against this barbaric element in the human psyche. The evil and the powerful can be brought to account
This war teaches us much....
'whose murderer still walks this earth'
?
Do tell.
Golding taught at my school, Bishop Wordsworth in Salisbury. He died of heart failure, apparently. Perhaps @Leon believes someone startled him to death?
For @Leon to know that (contrary to popular belief) Golding was murdered, and that his killer still walks the earth, suggests he has some inside information.
That the killer walks the earth, implies a traveller...and one perhaps interested in writing...
"implies" - THE most over-worked word on PB? Though Foxy is using it in jest!
A better analogy than Boris's EU vs. Britain = Russia vs. Ukraine one would be a post-separation Scotland wanting to join the EU, but RUK, for strategic reasons, is very anti. It offers the RUK-friendly Scottish PM a wide-ranging trade deal with RUK if Scotland gives up it's attempt to join the EU. However, it all kicks off on the Scottish side, as the attempt by RUK to decide the course of Scotland's future is resented by many, and many others frankly just hate the bones of the English, so it doesn't matter that there's probably more benefit in the UK deal than the EU deal for Scotland, protests kick off (aided by the EU) and unseat the RUK favouring PM, replacing him with an EU-loving one. There's pretty much open dislike from then on, RUK accusing the EU of unwarranted interference in it's back yard, the EU insisting that the UK is being a bully and attempting to thwart the will of the Scottish people. Scottish people growing steadily less pro-RUK, except a significant English minority, who are just getting more and more nervous. Etc.
I’m missing the bit where, in any circumstances, thus would justify rUK invading Scotland, razing Edinburgh to the ground, deporting the surviving population to Wales and repopulating the country with a bunch of Sassenachs
Well, it doesn't, as it doesn't in Russia's case either, but yet it's not impossible to see circumstances where the scenario might get really ugly.
I am confident that, despite @HYUFD entreaties, rUK would not invade Scotland.
In the same way as I know that Mrs T would not have nuked Argentina
No, we could just refuse Scotland a trade deal if they joined the EU instead.
Though if a Scottish nationalist government was ever granted an indyref2 and Yes won then the Scottish borders could well become the Scottish Donbass region, a disputed region claimed by both the rUK and Scottish government with a Unionist pro British majority stoll
No it wouldn’t. It just wouldn’t.
The Borders voted 67% to stay in the UK in 2014 and neighbour England, in fact it would be even more so
'The Borders voted 67% to stay in the UK in 2014 and neighbour England'
Lovely little Feudian slip.
And use of the article "The Borders"
Yep, that pesky definite article pops up with those other areas/regions so beloved by greater British nationalists, 'the' Orkneys and 'the' Shetlands. I'm sensing a pattern..
In any case HYUFD is talking rubbish. There is no area called the Borders or The Borders.
I thought the filth in Edinburgh were the Lothian And Borders police? Doesn't get much more official than that.
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Re: "compelled" you do have a wee point, though what I meant to say was that it compelled his highly public touting of arms shipments.
Re: bollocks, kindly keep yours to yourself. Seeing as how you've already aired 'em 3 times in your last 4 comments
Except now every country is now jumping up and down about how much they are doing to help out. Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?
I’ll call you out on your claims he is a Putinist any time I like.
"Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?"
No, but of course I never said that, or anything close.
Call out whatever you wish to call out for whatever. Just stop flaunting your family jewels.
Unless of course they are the essence of your argument?
You implied it by suggesting the only reason he is speaking publicly about it is because he’s Putin’s stooge. How do you explain everyone else doing the same then?
Because he's a proven liar, and (most) of the others are not?
Ah ok, so it’s based on your prejudices about the man, not actually facts.
Fact that Boris Johnson is a proven liar is not a fact?
No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one.
I've actually made several points, which you simply brush off.
Such as Boris making a security threat a peer of the realm, to mention but one.
No, that's not evidence that he's a Putinist. The appointment has done nothing to further Putin's agenda. Your other piece of evidence was the arms shipments to Ukraine. How's that working out for Putin?
Nope. Because YOU said (and I quote)
"No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one."
But yours truly DID provide facts (such as "Lord" Lebedev) which you have NOT refuted, just pooh-poohed.
NOT the same thing. Unless you think your utterances are ipso facto definitive? (Are you & HYUFD twins?)
No, those are not facts proving he is a Putinist, or his stooge. Or are you seriously claiming that weapons shipments from the UK to Ukraine prove he is one?
Word twisting is NOT same thing as arguing. (Anyway, you really are NOT up to the HYUFD gold standard in this regard.)
Kindly stop putting YOUR words into MY mouth. Save your gonads AND your sophistry for yourself.
This was the claim that started the whole thing
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
I'd have to go back further in the archives to find your other statements saying he is a Putinist, but they happen from time to time. In any case, I don't see any evidence presented here that he is one.
Well you haven’t really said anything. It’s an odd one as the world surely believes he died of heart failure in 1993. There isn’t going to be an exhumation of the remains. No cold case, unless someone accuses him of peadophilia, when the police might suddenly get interested.
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Johnson is not a Putinist, nonetheless it does look like Johnson and the Conservative Party have been played by Putin and Putin shills. Perhaps played like a violin.
Played extremely badly. The amount of damage done to Russian forces by UK supplied and trained solo diera demonstrates that quite clearly.
I don't know. Lebedev Minor found his way into the HoL against the advice of the security services.
And did what?
I don't know, do you? There is much innuendo on the internet. I certainly wouldn't want to comment on issues that may or may not be subject to NDAs.
Proceedings in the HoL are subject to NDAs? If it's not related to the HoL then his membership is irrelevant.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Kaliningrad would undoubtedly vote to stay with Russia. So it would be a rather pointless gesture.
I'm not sure that the provision would be pointless; there are plenty of other areas depending how far it goes.
How would the former (part of) Karelia now in Russia vote wrt rejoining Finland, for example?
82% Russian in 2010, only 7.4% Karelian, 1.4% Finnish
I don't think you can call it.
All the areas of Ukraine voted for independence in the 1991 Referendum, including the 'Russian' ones.
Karelia isn't part of the Ukraine. And you said "rejoining Finland", not "vote for independence".
Why does Ukraine constantly have the definite article put in front of it, is it a cold war remnant or some such. Not just yourself, the number of times I've heard on the radio an incorrect "'the' Ukraine" is phenomonal.
It's not incorrect. Geographic regions often take a definite article (eg, the Dordogne) and sometimes they are the name of a country, eg the Congo, the Sudan.
It used to be more common. People used to say the Lebanon, the Argentine.
The Ukrainians prefer us not to use the article, on the grounds it makes them sound like a region of Russia (although it may have actually been named in reference to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). Western Ukraine used to have other names eg Galicia, Volhynia, Lodomeria.
It makes no difference in Ukrainian or Russian, neither of which language uses definite or indefinite articles
"I live in United Kingdom" sounds wrong to me. As does "I am going to Czech".
"I live in the Congo" sounds right. "I live in the France" doesn't.
Custom and use mostly.
Actually my Czech friend (he left in 1968 for some reason but does speak the language) tends to call his country just Czech. But then the Czech Česko is a sort of adjectival form so it probably makes sense.
Czechia.
The Czech government approved Czechia as the official English short name in 2016.[28] The short name has been listed by the United Nations[29] and is used by other organizations such as the European Union,[30] the CIA,[31] and Google Maps.[32]
I have always wondered how foreigners (non-English-speaking ones) can purport to fashion the English language.
For what it's worth, have never heard an American refer to "the Czech" meaning Czech Republic.
And had never heard of a Brit using "the Czech" that way until today. It is common in UK?
Basic problem stems from fact at CR is divided between Bohemia and Moravia, and there is no (native) English word for the two combined?
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I can't begin to imaging the problems we'd be storing up for the future by turning Putin's feverish and mad accusations into reality.
Personally I think that is a perhaps partly a red herring, and that "republics" etc perhaps have a right to self-determination.
There are also plenty of pieces of other countries Ru has obtained by conquest quite recently.
This is an interesting and appalling thread on life in the Donetsk "republic", published last August. One of the strongest motivators of Ukranian resistance is that life in a Russian separatist Republic is very grim.
Jesus. If that is just halfway true Putin has taken Russia right back to Stalin-esque repression and abuse.
Absolute power, and what it does. Grim
I've read other threads on the "Republics", and while they are not quite as bad as that one, life in them appears to be very fart from fun.
Coincidentally I am just watching episode 9 of series 2 of "Rick Stein's Cornwall", when he talks about Cornishman William Golding, the writer (whose murderer still walks this earth)
Apparently Lord of the Flies was inspired by Golding's experience of WW2 which was - to my surprise - intense and profound. He was in command of a missile firing boat off Normandy in 1944
Golding wrote the book to illustrate how the most civilised Germans could descend into sadistic depravity, very quickly, and that the same is true of all humanity
A lesson we have to relearn, again and again
This also points up why Democracy is ultimately so much better. It is the one unique defence against this barbaric element in the human psyche. The evil and the powerful can be brought to account
This war teaches us much....
'whose murderer still walks this earth'
?
Do tell.
Golding taught at my school, Bishop Wordsworth in Salisbury. He died of heart failure, apparently. Perhaps @Leon believes someone startled him to death?
For @Leon to know that (contrary to popular belief) Golding was murdered, and that his killer still walks the earth, suggests he has some inside information.
I believe @leon to be old enough and to have some Cornish links. Good enough for me. Time to ring the coppers?
Some interesting undercurrents at the Conservative Spring Conference this past weekend.
A lot has been said about the Prime Minister's comments - having looked at them, if I didn't know better, I'd say he was ad-libbing to notes or bullet points rather than to a crafted well-drafted speech. It looks and sounds amateurish rather than what you would expect from a PM with an army of advisers and speech writers at his command.
Some might suggest the verbal clumsiness is part of the act - maybe and perhaps there's an element of cheap provocateur journalism but the act now looks tired and after everything that has happened, you can see why some might be calling for Boris Johnson to get off the stage.
On the economic front, Sunak is playing an old game in new colours - get the pain out of the way just in time for a pre-election tax cut (perhaps also as a ploy for a future leadership election). The problem with being a "responsible" CoE in difficult times is no one thanks you for it and the cost of rising costs ends up inevitably with the voters through having to pay more for everything (the militant will then chase that inflation via wage increases).
The only thing in his favour is if Rees-Mogg disagrees you're probably dong something right.
The antics of P&O Ferries are probably the last thing Sunak wanted or needed as it brought back some bad old memories of how employers were when things got tough and trying to b the workers' friend is never an act the Conservatives can play with conviction.
I'm still not certain what kind of Conservative Party we have or rather what kind of Party Sunak would like to lead - one that wins elections is the obvious answer but I detect a more fundamental crisis of the Tory soul (yes, they do have them). As others have said, events (as MacMillan once mentioned) have gotten in the way and are now posing awkward questions for all parties - the re-defining of the political landscape post-Covid and in the context of shifting alliances elsewhere challenge us all.
25th December - My wife tested positive 20th February - My wife tested positive 20th March - My wife tested positive
She's obviously a very positive person!
Looks like she got it from her sister in law, who tested positive on Thursday.
A hat trick inside 3 months. Quite a feat.
I've been negative every time (so far).
S Times says NHS know of 69 people who have had it four times. (exact figure from memory but something like that).
I’d love to know how I’ll they were each time. Anecdotally omicron has a bit of kick to it among my thrice vaccinated colleagues and friends, but after a day or two of bad it gets better. A colleague is still testing positive, now without symptoms.
A better analogy than Boris's EU vs. Britain = Russia vs. Ukraine one would be a post-separation Scotland wanting to join the EU, but RUK, for strategic reasons, is very anti. It offers the RUK-friendly Scottish PM a wide-ranging trade deal with RUK if Scotland gives up it's attempt to join the EU. However, it all kicks off on the Scottish side, as the attempt by RUK to decide the course of Scotland's future is resented by many, and many others frankly just hate the bones of the English, so it doesn't matter that there's probably more benefit in the UK deal than the EU deal for Scotland, protests kick off (aided by the EU) and unseat the RUK favouring PM, replacing him with an EU-loving one. There's pretty much open dislike from then on, RUK accusing the EU of unwarranted interference in it's back yard, the EU insisting that the UK is being a bully and attempting to thwart the will of the Scottish people. Scottish people growing steadily less pro-RUK, except a significant English minority, who are just getting more and more nervous. Etc.
I’m missing the bit where, in any circumstances, thus would justify rUK invading Scotland, razing Edinburgh to the ground, deporting the surviving population to Wales and repopulating the country with a bunch of Sassenachs
Well, it doesn't, as it doesn't in Russia's case either, but yet it's not impossible to see circumstances where the scenario might get really ugly.
I am confident that, despite @HYUFD entreaties, rUK would not invade Scotland.
In the same way as I know that Mrs T would not have nuked Argentina
No, we could just refuse Scotland a trade deal if they joined the EU instead.
Though if a Scottish nationalist government was ever granted an indyref2 and Yes won then the Scottish borders could well become the Scottish Donbass region, a disputed region claimed by both the rUK and Scottish government with a Unionist pro British majority stoll
No it wouldn’t. It just wouldn’t.
The Borders voted 67% to stay in the UK in 2014 and neighbour England, in fact it would be even more so
'The Borders voted 67% to stay in the UK in 2014 and neighbour England'
Lovely little Feudian slip.
And use of the article "The Borders"
Yep, that pesky definite article pops up with those other areas/regions so beloved by greater British nationalists, 'the' Orkneys and 'the' Shetlands. I'm sensing a pattern..
In any case HYUFD is talking rubbish. There is no area called the Borders or The Borders.
I thought the filth in Edinburgh were the Lothian And Borders police? Doesn't get much more official than that.
Its all Police Scotland now.
"We're actually supposed to call it the "service" now. Official vocab guidelines state that "force" is too aggressive."
A better analogy than Boris's EU vs. Britain = Russia vs. Ukraine one would be a post-separation Scotland wanting to join the EU, but RUK, for strategic reasons, is very anti. It offers the RUK-friendly Scottish PM a wide-ranging trade deal with RUK if Scotland gives up it's attempt to join the EU. However, it all kicks off on the Scottish side, as the attempt by RUK to decide the course of Scotland's future is resented by many, and many others frankly just hate the bones of the English, so it doesn't matter that there's probably more benefit in the UK deal than the EU deal for Scotland, protests kick off (aided by the EU) and unseat the RUK favouring PM, replacing him with an EU-loving one. There's pretty much open dislike from then on, RUK accusing the EU of unwarranted interference in it's back yard, the EU insisting that the UK is being a bully and attempting to thwart the will of the Scottish people. Scottish people growing steadily less pro-RUK, except a significant English minority, who are just getting more and more nervous. Etc.
I’m missing the bit where, in any circumstances, thus would justify rUK invading Scotland, razing Edinburgh to the ground, deporting the surviving population to Wales and repopulating the country with a bunch of Sassenachs
Well, it doesn't, as it doesn't in Russia's case either, but yet it's not impossible to see circumstances where the scenario might get really ugly.
I am confident that, despite @HYUFD entreaties, rUK would not invade Scotland.
In the same way as I know that Mrs T would not have nuked Argentina
No, we could just refuse Scotland a trade deal if they joined the EU instead.
Though if a Scottish nationalist government was ever granted an indyref2 and Yes won then the Scottish borders could well become the Scottish Donbass region, a disputed region claimed by both the rUK and Scottish government with a Unionist pro British majority stoll
No it wouldn’t. It just wouldn’t.
The Borders voted 67% to stay in the UK in 2014 and neighbour England, in fact it would be even more so
'The Borders voted 67% to stay in the UK in 2014 and neighbour England'
Lovely little Feudian slip.
And use of the article "The Borders"
Yep, that pesky definite article pops up with those other areas/regions so beloved by greater British nationalists, 'the' Orkneys and 'the' Shetlands. I'm sensing a pattern..
In any case HYUFD is talking rubbish. There is no area called the Borders or The Borders.
I thought the filth in Edinburgh were the Lothian And Borders police? Doesn't get much more official than that.
Its all Police Scotland now.
"We're actually supposed to call it the "service" now. Official vocab guidelines state that "force" is too aggressive."
Service suggests you might get something useful from them. Not sure that’s helpful either...
Seems the Conservative strategists need to start on the Irish question. Shore up the home counties babushkas.
Slightly more seriously.... the inverted population pyramid is doing strange things to our politics. Who would have thought the elderly would be a so reactionary. Do we age into into parochialism, is there a biological switch?
The highest vote for Le Pen in France comes from 25 to 50 year olds, not pensioners
I thought it was - proportionately - the 18 to 24 group where Le Pen's support was strongest.
No, in the 2017 runoff Le Pen got only 34% of 18 to 24s but over 40% of 25 to 49 year olds
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Re: "compelled" you do have a wee point, though what I meant to say was that it compelled his highly public touting of arms shipments.
Re: bollocks, kindly keep yours to yourself. Seeing as how you've already aired 'em 3 times in your last 4 comments
Except now every country is now jumping up and down about how much they are doing to help out. Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?
I’ll call you out on your claims he is a Putinist any time I like.
"Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?"
No, but of course I never said that, or anything close.
Call out whatever you wish to call out for whatever. Just stop flaunting your family jewels.
Unless of course they are the essence of your argument?
You implied it by suggesting the only reason he is speaking publicly about it is because he’s Putin’s stooge. How do you explain everyone else doing the same then?
Because he's a proven liar, and (most) of the others are not?
Ah ok, so it’s based on your prejudices about the man, not actually facts.
Fact that Boris Johnson is a proven liar is not a fact?
No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one.
I've actually made several points, which you simply brush off.
Such as Boris making a security threat a peer of the realm, to mention but one.
No, that's not evidence that he's a Putinist. The appointment has done nothing to further Putin's agenda. Your other piece of evidence was the arms shipments to Ukraine. How's that working out for Putin?
Nope. Because YOU said (and I quote)
"No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one."
But yours truly DID provide facts (such as "Lord" Lebedev) which you have NOT refuted, just pooh-poohed.
NOT the same thing. Unless you think your utterances are ipso facto definitive? (Are you & HYUFD twins?)
No, those are not facts proving he is a Putinist, or his stooge. Or are you seriously claiming that weapons shipments from the UK to Ukraine prove he is one?
Word twisting is NOT same thing as arguing. (Anyway, you really are NOT up to the HYUFD gold standard in this regard.)
Kindly stop putting YOUR words into MY mouth. Save your gonads AND your sophistry for yourself.
This was the claim that started the whole thing
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
I'd have to go back further in the archives to find your other statements saying he is a Putinist, but they happen from time to time. In any case, I don't see any evidence presented here that he is one.
Only thing I'd change re: quote above, is to insert "more" between "ship" and "arms".
As for evidence, IF the PM took a dump on the curb in front of No. 10, somehow doubt THAT pile of shit would be near enough, to dent your seemingly-boundless faith in his high capacity & rectitude?
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Kaliningrad would undoubtedly vote to stay with Russia. So it would be a rather pointless gesture.
I'm not sure that the provision would be pointless; there are plenty of other areas depending how far it goes.
How would the former (part of) Karelia now in Russia vote wrt rejoining Finland, for example?
82% Russian in 2010, only 7.4% Karelian, 1.4% Finnish
I don't think you can call it.
All the areas of Ukraine voted for independence in the 1991 Referendum, including the 'Russian' ones.
Karelia isn't part of the Ukraine. And you said "rejoining Finland", not "vote for independence".
Why does Ukraine constantly have the definite article put in front of it, is it a cold war remnant or some such. Not just yourself, the number of times I've heard on the radio an incorrect "'the' Ukraine" is phenomonal.
It's not incorrect. Geographic regions often take a definite article (eg, the Dordogne) and sometimes they are the name of a country, eg the Congo, the Sudan.
It used to be more common. People used to say the Lebanon, the Argentine.
The Ukrainians prefer us not to use the article, on the grounds it makes them sound like a region of Russia (although it may have actually been named in reference to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). Western Ukraine used to have other names eg Galicia, Volhynia, Lodomeria.
It makes no difference in Ukrainian or Russian, neither of which language uses definite or indefinite articles
"I live in United Kingdom" sounds wrong to me. As does "I am going to Czech".
"I live in the Congo" sounds right. "I live in the France" doesn't.
Custom and use mostly.
Actually my Czech friend (he left in 1968 for some reason but does speak the language) tends to call his country just Czech. But then the Czech Česko is a sort of adjectival form so it probably makes sense.
Czechia.
The Czech government approved Czechia as the official English short name in 2016.[28] The short name has been listed by the United Nations[29] and is used by other organizations such as the European Union,[30] the CIA,[31] and Google Maps.[32]
I have always wondered how foreigners (non-English-speaking ones) can purport to fashion the English language.
For what it's worth, have never heard an American refer to "the Czech" meaning Czech Republic.
And had never heard of a Brit using "the Czech" that way until today. It is common in UK?
Basic problem stems from fact at CR is divided between Bohemia and Moravia, and there is no (native) English word for the two combined?
Czechia has been officially used by the Czech government since 2016.
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Johnson is not a Putinist, nonetheless it does look like Johnson and the Conservative Party have been played by Putin and Putin shills. Perhaps played like a violin.
Played extremely badly. The amount of damage done to Russian forces by UK supplied and trained solo diera demonstrates that quite clearly.
I don't know. Lebedev Minor found his way into the HoL against the advice of the security services.
And did what?
I don't know, do you? There is much innuendo on the internet. I certainly wouldn't want to comment on issues that may or may not be subject to NDAs.
Proceedings in the HoL are subject to NDAs? If it's not related to the HoL then his membership is irrelevant.
Now you're being silly.
You will understand that unless I want a ban I can't directly comment on innuendo and how it might impact on Johnson's relationship with Oligarchs.
Young Lebedev may be as clean as a whistle and genuinely interested in Conservative Party politics in both Richmond and Siberia.
Eyebrow raising facts as we know them regarding Lebedev's elevation to the HoL are: Johnson was apparently warned by the security services and Lebedev Senior was apparently a KGB operative back in the Soviet days.
Russia really doesn’t want a functioning Ukraine - even in the areas it might think it has a chance of holding.
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1505255982368186380 The Russian air force completelly destroyed the one of the largest in #Europe metallurgical plants #AzovStal in #Mariupol city. "It's impossible to restart it. All is destroyed" said deputy city mayor Sergey Orlov for #Ukrainian media Forbes.
Just add it onto the reparations.
What reparations? Ukraine will not prolong the war over reparations. Look to Uncle Sam, the EU and even dear old Blighty to pick up the tab. There may be a question over whether America will insist on reparations as the price for lifting sanctions.
Ukraine won't. The rest of the world might make reparations part of the price for the removal of sanctions. "You broke it, you pay for it."
I think it's important for Russia to realise it did this, and that it lost. Germany did not get fully defeated in WW1, so a myth of treachery could develop. Only after full defeat in WW2 did it change. The same with Iraq: GW1 was a defeat for Iraq, but not a big one. Hence there was round 2.
If there is peace (hopefully!), and we want to avoid this happening again in a few years, Russia needs to know it was the aggressor, and that it lost. That does not mean we need to invade, but it does mean that they need to accept their crimes. And that probably means removing Putin and his fellow travellers.
I think restoring Crimea to Ukraine and confiscating Kaliningrad would do a better job at this than financial reparations.
That's not really fair to the people of Kaliningrad
Since Putin is demanding that areas of Ukraine be allowed to vote to secede, the same for areas of (currently) Russia seems not unreasonable.
Kaliningrad would undoubtedly vote to stay with Russia. So it would be a rather pointless gesture.
I'm not sure that the provision would be pointless; there are plenty of other areas depending how far it goes.
How would the former (part of) Karelia now in Russia vote wrt rejoining Finland, for example?
82% Russian in 2010, only 7.4% Karelian, 1.4% Finnish
I don't think you can call it.
All the areas of Ukraine voted for independence in the 1991 Referendum, including the 'Russian' ones.
Karelia isn't part of the Ukraine. And you said "rejoining Finland", not "vote for independence".
Why does Ukraine constantly have the definite article put in front of it, is it a cold war remnant or some such. Not just yourself, the number of times I've heard on the radio an incorrect "'the' Ukraine" is phenomonal.
It's not incorrect. Geographic regions often take a definite article (eg, the Dordogne) and sometimes they are the name of a country, eg the Congo, the Sudan.
It used to be more common. People used to say the Lebanon, the Argentine.
The Ukrainians prefer us not to use the article, on the grounds it makes them sound like a region of Russia (although it may have actually been named in reference to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). Western Ukraine used to have other names eg Galicia, Volhynia, Lodomeria.
It makes no difference in Ukrainian or Russian, neither of which language uses definite or indefinite articles
"I live in United Kingdom" sounds wrong to me. As does "I am going to Czech".
"I live in the Congo" sounds right. "I live in the France" doesn't.
Custom and use mostly.
Actually my Czech friend (he left in 1968 for some reason but does speak the language) tends to call his country just Czech. But then the Czech Česko is a sort of adjectival form so it probably makes sense.
Czechia.
The Czech government approved Czechia as the official English short name in 2016.[28] The short name has been listed by the United Nations[29] and is used by other organizations such as the European Union,[30] the CIA,[31] and Google Maps.[32]
I have always wondered how foreigners (non-English-speaking ones) can purport to fashion the English language.
For what it's worth, have never heard an American refer to "the Czech" meaning Czech Republic.
And had never heard of a Brit using "the Czech" that way until today. It is common in UK?
Basic problem stems from fact at CR is divided between Bohemia and Moravia, and there is no (native) English word for the two combined?
Czechia has been officially used by the Czech government since 2016.
Ain't talking officialese, but rather what people in US & UK actually call country infested with Czechs . . . or "Czechians" if you prefer . . .
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Yes, there are many reasons one might dislike this PM, but anyone saying he’s in the pocket of the Russians is basically telling themselves a fairy story because they already dislike him. Stick with the other reasons to dislike him guys - he ain’t Donald Trump. Otherwise you might find you’ve cried wolf too often when we really do have a corrupt PM in the pocket of a foreign power one day.
Yes. He's in the pocket of the very rich, not of the Russians. Some of the very rich happen to be Russians, that's all. But the very rich are from lots of other places as well, including the UK.
Actually fewer of the rich voted for Boris in 2019 than usually voted Tory.
Only 40% of voters earning over £70,000 a year (the highest earning group in the Yougov post election survey) voted Conservative in 2019 compared to 43% overall. In 2015 however 51% of those earning over £70,000 voted for Cameron's Conservative party compared to only 37% overall.
You miss my point spectacularly. I said the PM was in the pocket of the very rich. I'm talking about the wealthiest 0.1%, the multi- millionaires and billionaires; not those on salaries that many PBers wouldn't cross the road for.
PLEASE SKIP OVER THIS POST IF YOU ARE OF A SENSITIVE DISPOSITION.
THIS IS THE WORST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN AND CARING IS SHARING
There's a recurring meme of Glasgow pillow talk consisting mainly of 'Are ye in yet?' No self respecting Glaswegian would do it with the binbag full of custard of course.
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
Arms supply by UK to UKR also allows HMG to hold the line re: UKR refugees, thus pleasing Tory base AND red-wallers.
The arms and training by UK has been ongoing since 2015
Yes, under a normal (if underwelming) Conservative government, in concert with NATO.
In contrast, in leadup and aftermath of invasion, Boris Johnson went into overdrive. Motivated only by his Churchillian love of freedom? Or need to deflect questions re: dodgy Russian donations, dodgy Russian peer, dodgy overriding of security services, etc., etc.
His point is the arms shipment are nothing new, and they certainly weren’t him going into overdrive. It was just more of the same.
And in concert with NATO? Some of our NATO partners were refusing arms shipments from being flown in their airspace.
"More of the same"
Do you mean "more" in sense of continuation? Or increase?
And is statement actually true re: 2nd meaning?
As for "in concert with NATO" I was talking about pre-Boris Tory governments. Think refusals you cite were recently, with Boris in No. 10? Which if true underscores my point.
It’s a continuation of military support. You are suggesting the only reason for the aid to Ukraine is so that Boris can avoid awkward questions. That is demonstrably bollocks, since it started well before he got anywhere near being PM.
The same NATO allies that blocked airspace were supplying training and and weapons in the mid 2010s?
I'm NOT suggesting desire to redress (for public consumption) the inconvenient fact of Russian financial support for Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular was the ONLY reason for PM's very public pose as Tribune of Ukrainian Freedom.
What I'm saying, is that it was ONE factor, and a BIG one.
Nope, you said it compelled him to do the arms shipments. Given that they started before he was PM that’s a bit of a stretch.
I know you keep pushing this line that Johnson is a “Putinist”, but it’s just more of the same bollocks.
Re: "compelled" you do have a wee point, though what I meant to say was that it compelled his highly public touting of arms shipments.
Re: bollocks, kindly keep yours to yourself. Seeing as how you've already aired 'em 3 times in your last 4 comments
Except now every country is now jumping up and down about how much they are doing to help out. Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?
I’ll call you out on your claims he is a Putinist any time I like.
"Do you think they are all in Putin’s pocket?"
No, but of course I never said that, or anything close.
Call out whatever you wish to call out for whatever. Just stop flaunting your family jewels.
Unless of course they are the essence of your argument?
You implied it by suggesting the only reason he is speaking publicly about it is because he’s Putin’s stooge. How do you explain everyone else doing the same then?
Because he's a proven liar, and (most) of the others are not?
Ah ok, so it’s based on your prejudices about the man, not actually facts.
Fact that Boris Johnson is a proven liar is not a fact?
No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one.
I've actually made several points, which you simply brush off.
Such as Boris making a security threat a peer of the realm, to mention but one.
No, that's not evidence that he's a Putinist. The appointment has done nothing to further Putin's agenda. Your other piece of evidence was the arms shipments to Ukraine. How's that working out for Putin?
Nope. Because YOU said (and I quote)
"No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one."
But yours truly DID provide facts (such as "Lord" Lebedev) which you have NOT refuted, just pooh-poohed.
NOT the same thing. Unless you think your utterances are ipso facto definitive? (Are you & HYUFD twins?)
No, those are not facts proving he is a Putinist, or his stooge. Or are you seriously claiming that weapons shipments from the UK to Ukraine prove he is one?
Word twisting is NOT same thing as arguing. (Anyway, you really are NOT up to the HYUFD gold standard in this regard.)
Kindly stop putting YOUR words into MY mouth. Save your gonads AND your sophistry for yourself.
This was the claim that started the whole thing
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
I'd have to go back further in the archives to find your other statements saying he is a Putinist, but they happen from time to time. In any case, I don't see any evidence presented here that he is one.
There is a problem. A real one.
- The Good Europeans (especially the Germans) backed the cause of Nothing To See Here. Arms shipments were inflammatory and dangerous. Ukraine needed Ito be reasonable and comply with Minsk 2. - The UK and US went for arming the Ukrainians over a period of years - in depth it now turns out. Not just a few crates of weapons. They really did something here. - The Eastern European countries that aren't a Putin franchise (see Hungary) backed the UK and US approach.
The problem is that this is Bad Facts. At least to some people. So they need something better than.... reality.
Comments
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021/index/ukr
?
Do tell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_Craft_Tank_(Rocket) (or the equivalent a bit bigger or smaller)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gGrkZ00Iwc
According to wiki:
"In 1985, Golding and his wife moved to a house called Tullimaar in Perranarworthal, near Truro, Cornwall. He died of heart failure eight years later on 19 June 1993. His body was buried in the parish churchyard of Bowerchalke near his former home and the Wiltshire county border with Hampshire and Dorset."
Sigmund pinned me from beyond the grave obvs, or I haven't got used to my new mini keyboard.
On a tangent, anyone wanting some entertaining tosh with good looking actors & decent production values, they could do worse than Freud on Netflix. Turn of the century Vienna looks lovely.
Such as Boris making a security threat a peer of the realm, to mention but one.
Because they couldn’t have voted for what they wanted unless they were misled by some evil foreign power. After all, *the* Establishment was united in telling them not to be so silly
As Adlai Stevenson replied when complimented in the 1956 presidential election 'you have the votes of all intelligent people'. 'Sadly Madam, that is not enough to win!''
The average voter is not an intellectual, they have GCSEs but not a degree
Not least that restructuring economies causes a lot of short term difficulties, even if there is gain long term. Certainly that has been the experience of other countries joining the EU.
"No, facts about him being a Putinist, or his stooge. None of which have been provided in this discussion, simply your assertion that he is one."
But yours truly DID provide facts (such as "Lord" Lebedev) which you have NOT refuted, just pooh-poohed.
NOT the same thing. Unless you think your utterances are ipso facto definitive? (Are you & HYUFD twins?)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_French_presidential_election
The Czech government approved Czechia as the official English short name in 2016.[28] The short name has been listed by the United Nations[29] and is used by other organizations such as the European Union,[30] the CIA,[31] and Google Maps.[32]
25th December - My wife tested positive
20th February - My wife tested positive
20th March - My wife tested positive
She's obviously a very positive person!
Looks like she got it from her sister in law, who tested positive on Thursday.
A hat trick inside 3 months. Quite a feat.
I've been negative every time (so far).
Kindly stop putting YOUR words into MY mouth. Save your gonads AND your sophistry for yourself.
Best thing about Putin's rampant influence-peddling re: Conservative Party in general, and Boris Johnson in particular, is that it's compelled the Prime Minister to ship arms to Ukraine so as to (partly) avoid be branded as Putinist stooge like Trumpsky & Co.
I'd have to go back further in the archives to find your other statements saying he is a Putinist, but they happen from time to time. In any case, I don't see any evidence presented here that he is one.
It’s an odd one as the world surely believes he died of heart failure in 1993.
There isn’t going to be an exhumation of the remains. No cold case, unless someone accuses him of peadophilia, when the police might suddenly get interested.
And had never heard of a Brit using "the Czech" that way until today. It is common in UK?
Basic problem stems from fact at CR is divided between Bohemia and Moravia, and there is no (native) English word for the two combined?
Some interesting undercurrents at the Conservative Spring Conference this past weekend.
A lot has been said about the Prime Minister's comments - having looked at them, if I didn't know better, I'd say he was ad-libbing to notes or bullet points rather than to a crafted well-drafted speech. It looks and sounds amateurish rather than what you would expect from a PM with an army of advisers and speech writers at his command.
Some might suggest the verbal clumsiness is part of the act - maybe and perhaps there's an element of cheap provocateur journalism but the act now looks tired and after everything that has happened, you can see why some might be calling for Boris Johnson to get off the stage.
On the economic front, Sunak is playing an old game in new colours - get the pain out of the way just in time for a pre-election tax cut (perhaps also as a ploy for a future leadership election). The problem with being a "responsible" CoE in difficult times is no one thanks you for it and the cost of rising costs ends up inevitably with the voters through having to pay more for everything (the militant will then chase that inflation via wage increases).
The only thing in his favour is if Rees-Mogg disagrees you're probably dong something right.
The antics of P&O Ferries are probably the last thing Sunak wanted or needed as it brought back some bad old memories of how employers were when things got tough and trying to b the workers' friend is never an act the Conservatives can play with conviction.
I'm still not certain what kind of Conservative Party we have or rather what kind of Party Sunak would like to lead - one that wins elections is the obvious answer but I detect a more fundamental crisis of the Tory soul (yes, they do have them). As others have said, events (as MacMillan once mentioned) have gotten in the way and are now posing awkward questions for all parties - the re-defining of the political landscape post-Covid and in the context of shifting alliances elsewhere challenge us all.
On a more serious note, what’s the benefit of knowing if you have covid or not? Just stop testing and you won’t test positive…
PLEASE SKIP OVER THIS POST IF YOU ARE OF A SENSITIVE DISPOSITION.
THIS IS THE WORST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN AND CARING IS SHARING
Six people are dead and many injured, it's a terrible tragedy (or atrocity)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60811591
There is much wild speculation. Gang warfare, total accident, police car chase?
Twitter thinks it is two Italian-Belgians, who did it deliberately, while high
She’s not a very good writer is she?
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/testing/test-results/positive-test-result/
But I'll assume that Wikipedia is correct (albeit they are all based on post event surveys, so hard to know for certain.)
As for evidence, IF the PM took a dump on the curb in front of No. 10, somehow doubt THAT pile of shit would be near enough, to dent your seemingly-boundless faith in his high capacity & rectitude?
You will understand that unless I want a ban I can't directly comment on innuendo and how it might impact on Johnson's relationship with Oligarchs.
Young Lebedev may be as clean as a whistle and genuinely interested in Conservative Party politics in both Richmond and Siberia.
Eyebrow raising facts as we know them regarding Lebedev's elevation to the HoL are: Johnson was apparently warned by the security services and Lebedev Senior was apparently a KGB operative back in the Soviet days.
Therefore since it occurred, it can not have been terrorism
Obvs.
They should just say "We don't know yet", which is clearly the truth
I mean if it's kids' TV and a load of gunge is being dropped on someone from a height, maybe, but...
- The Good Europeans (especially the Germans) backed the cause of Nothing To See Here. Arms shipments were inflammatory and dangerous. Ukraine needed Ito be reasonable and comply with Minsk 2.
- The UK and US went for arming the Ukrainians over a period of years - in depth it now turns out. Not just a few crates of weapons. They really did something here.
- The Eastern European countries that aren't a Putin franchise (see Hungary) backed the UK and US approach.
The problem is that this is Bad Facts. At least to some people. So they need something better than.... reality.